Related papers: Complementary aspects of non-equilibrium thermodyn…
Of indisputable relevance for non-equilibrium thermodynamics, fluctuations theorems have been generalized to the framework of quantum thermodynamics, with the notion of work playing a key role in such contexts. The typical approach consists…
Active matter systems exhibit rich emergent behavior due to constant injection and dissipation of energy at the level of individual agents. Since these systems are far from equilibrium, their dynamics and energetics cannot be understood…
The theoretical understanding of active matter, which is driven out of equilibrium by directed motion, is still fragmental and model oriented. Stochastic thermodynamics, on the other hand, is a comprehensive theoretical framework for driven…
Originally formulated for macroscopic machines, the laws of thermodynamics were recently shown to hold for quantum systems coupled to ideal sources of work (external classical fields) and heat (systems at equilibrium). Ongoing efforts have…
We reconsider a well-known relationship between the fluctuation theorem and the second law of thermodynamics by evaluating a probability measure-valued process. In order to establish a bridge between microscopic and macroscopic behaviors,…
The biological cell exhibits a fantastic range of behaviors, but ultimately these are governed by a handful of physical and chemical principles. Here we explore simple theory, known for decades and based on the simple thermodynamics of…
Noncommutativity of observables is a central feature of quantum physics. It plays a fundamental role in the formulation of the uncertainty principle for complementary variables and strongly affects the laws of thermodynamics for systems…
The concept of work is basic for statistical thermodynamics. To gain a fuller understanding of work and its (quantum) features, it needs to be represented as an average of a fluctuating quantity. Here I focus on the work done between two…
Biomolecules carry out very specialized tasks inside the cell where energies involved are few tens of k_BT, small enough for thermal fluctuations to be relevant in many biomolecular processes. In this paper I discuss a few concepts and…
We investigate the connection between recent results in quantum thermodynamics and fluctuation relations by adopting a fully quantum mechanical description of thermodynamics. By including a work system whose energy is allowed to fluctuate,…
We study how Thomson's formulation of the second law: no work is extracted from an equilibrium ensemble by a cyclic process, emerges in the quantum situation through the averaging over fluctuations of work. The latter concept is carefully…
For macroscopic systems, the second law of thermodynamics establishes an inequality between the amount of work performed on a system in contact with a thermal reservoir, and the change in its free energy. For microscopic systems, this…
We solve a set of selected exercises on rotational motion requiring a mechanical and thermodynamical analysis. When non-conservative forces or thermal effects are present, a complete study must use the first law of thermodynamics together…
The formulation of the First and Second Principles of thermodynamics for a particle in contact with a heat bath and submitted to an external force is analyzed, by means of the Boltzmann-Lorentz kinetic equation. The possible definitions of…
In thermodynamics, quantum coherences - superpositions between energy eigenstates - behave in distinctly nonclassical ways. Recently mathematical frameworks have emerged to account for these features and have provided a range of novel…
Thermodynamic selection is an indirect competition between agents feeding on the same energy resource and obeying the laws of thermodynamics. We examine scenarios of this selection, where the agent is modeled as a heat-engine coupled to two…
In this report I discuss fluctuation theorems and transient violations of the second law of thermodynamics in small systems. Special emphasis is placed on free-energy recovery methods in the framework of non-equilibrium single-molecule…
We provide a characterization of energy in the form of exchanged heat and work between two interacting constituents of a closed, bipartite, correlated quantum system. By defining a binding energy we derive a consistent quantum formulation…
Traditional quantum thermodynamic frameworks associate work to energy exchanges induced by unitary transformations generated by external controls, and heat to energy exchanges induced by bath interaction. Recently, a framework was…
We establish the fluctuation theorem in the presence of information exchange between a nonequilibrium system and other degrees of freedom such as an observer and a feedback controller, where the amount of information exchange is added to…