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Thermal operations are an operational model of non-equilibrium quantum thermodynamics. In the absence of coherence between energy levels, exact state transition conditions under thermal operations are known in terms of a mathematical…
Thermodynamics allows the application of Statistical Mechanics to finite and even small systems. As surface effects cannot be scaled away, one has to be careful with the standard arguments of splitting a system into two or bringing two…
In self-assembling systems, geometric frustration leads to complex states characterized by internal gradients of shape misfit. Frustrated assemblies have drawn recent interest due to the unique possibility that their thermodynamics can…
The fact that macroscopic systems approach thermal equilibrium may seem puzzling, for example, because it may seem to conflict with the time-reversibility of the microscopic dynamics. We here prove that in a macroscopic quantum system for a…
Athermal (i.e. zero-temperature) under-constrained systems are typically floppy, but they can be rigidified by the application of external strain. Following our recently developed analytical theory for the athermal limit, here and in the…
In Newtonian mechanics, any closed-system dynamics of a composite system in a microstate will leave all its individual subsystems in distinct microstates, however this fails dramatically in quantum mechanics due to the existence of quantum…
We develop a resource-theoretic framework that allows one to bridge the gap between two approaches to quantum thermodynamics based on Markovian thermal processes (which model memoryless dynamics) and thermal operations (which model…
The thermodynamical properties of a generalized Dicke model are calculated and related with the critical properties of its energy spectrum, namely the quantum phase transitions (QPT) and excited state quantum phase transitions (ESQPT). The…
The strong connection between correlations and quantum thermodynamics raises a natural question about the preparation of correlated quantum states from two copies of a thermal qubit. In this work we study the specific forms of allowed and…
The steady state heat currents of continuous absorption machines can be decomposed into thermodynamically consistent contributions, each of them associated with a circuit in the graph representing the master equation of the thermal device.…
We will study a class of system composed of interacting unicyclic machines placed in contact with a hot and cold thermal baths subjected to a non-conservative driving worksource. Despite their simplicity, these models showcase an intricate…
Thermal contact is the archetype of non-equilibrium processes driven by constant non-equilibrium constraints enforced by reservoirs exchanging conserved microscopic quantities. In models with a finite number of possible configurations, if…
The multiscale flow structure in the solar convection zone - the coexistence of such features as the granules, mesogranules, supergranules and giant cells - has not yet been properly understood. Here, the possible role of one physical…
How much work can be extracted from a heat bath using a thermal machine? The study of this question has a very long tradition in statistical physics in the weak-coupling limit, applied to macroscopic systems. However, the assumption that…
The emergence of irreversibility in physical processes, despite the fundamentally reversible nature of quantum mechanics, remains an open question in physics. This thesis explores the intricate relationship between quantum mechanics and…
The relationship between thermodynamics and statistical physics is valid in the thermodynamic limit - when the number of particles becomes very large. Here, we study thermodynamics in the opposite regime - at both the nano scale, and when…
We study a process of heat transfer between a body of heat capacity C(T) and a sequence of N heat reservoirs, with temperatures equally spaced between an initial temperature T_0 and a final temperature T_N. The body and the heat reservoirs…
Understanding the thermodynamics of the duplication process is a fundamental step towards a comprehensive physical theory of biological systems. However, the immense complexity of real cells obscures the fundamental tensions between energy…
We develop a general theory describing the thermodynamical behavior of open quantum systems coupled to thermal baths beyond perturbation theory. Our approach is based on the exact time-local quantum master equation for the reduced open…
There are many exotic thermodynamic processes that are hard to study in nature. Here, we synthesize a structured environment to explore the extremes of thermodynamics. We present an engine running at extreme temperatures of above ten…