Related papers: Generalized Second Law and optimal protocols for n…
We demonstrate experimentally that, applying optimal protocols which drive the system between two equilibrium states characterized by a free energy difference $\Delta F$, we can maximize the probability of performing the transition between…
The second law of thermodynamics states that for a thermally isolated system entropy never decreases. Most physical processes we observe in nature involve variations of macroscopic quantities over spatial and temporal scales much larger…
Fluctuation theorems are a generalization of thermodynamics on small scales and provide the tools to characterize the fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities in non-equilibrium nanoscale systems. They are particularly important for…
The generalized Langevin equation with an exponential kernel is used to analyze memory effects on the optimal work done by a Brownian particle in a heat bath and subjected to a harmonic moving potential. The generalized overdamping scenario…
The probability distribution function for an out of equilibrium system may sometimes be approximated by a physically motivated "trial" distribution. A particularly interesting case is when a driven system (e.g., active matter) is…
We consider a general framework for multi-type interacting particle systems on graphs, where particles move one at a time by random walk steps, different types may have different speeds, and may interact, possibly randomly, when they meet.…
Physical systems driven away from equilibrium by an external controller dissipate heat to the environment; the excess entropy production in the thermal reservoir can be interpreted as a "cost" to transform the system in a finite time. The…
There are several formulations of the second law, and they may, in principle, have different domains of validity. Here a simple mathematical theorem is proven which serves as the most general basis for the second law, namely the Thomson…
Statistical mechanics descriptions of the second law of thermodynamics generally imply point-like particles driven by a dissipative overall mechanism for their simultaneous time-evolution. As the number of involved particles grows larger,…
We investigate thermodynamics of general nonequilibrium processes stopped at stochastic times. We propose a systematic strategy for constructing fluctuation-theorem-like martingales for each thermodynamic functional, yielding a family of…
Gibbs' theorem, which is originally intended for canonical ensembles with complete statistics has been generalized to open systems with incomplete statistics. As a result of this generalization, it is shown that the stationary equilibrium…
We investigate the unified first law and the generalized second law in a modified holographic dark energy model. The thermodynamical analysis on the apparent horizon can work and the corresponding entropy formula is extracted from the…
An apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics occurs when an atom coupled to a zero-temperature bath, being necessarily in an excited state, is used to extract work from the bath. Here the fallacy is that it takes work to couple…
We propose a new form of the Second Law inequality that defines a tight bound for extractable work from the non-equilibrium quantum state. In classical thermodynamics, the optimal work is given by the difference of free energy, what…
The equilibrium conditions of a system consisting of a box with gas divided by a piston are revised. The apparent indetermination of the problem is solved by explicitly imposing the constancy of the internal energy when the Entropy Maximum…
Jarzynski's equality sets a strong bound on the probability of violating the second law of thermodynamics by extracting work beyond the free energy difference. We derive finite-time refinements to this bound for driven systems in contact…
The generalized second law is proven for semiclassical quantum fields falling across a causal horizon, minimally coupled to general relativity. The proof is much more general than previous proofs in that it permits the quantum fields to be…
We study the work fluctuations of a particle, confined to a moving harmonic potential, under the influence of friction and external Poissonian shot noise. The asymmetry of the noise induces an effective nonlinearity in the potential, which…
We establish a refined version of the Second Law of Thermodynamics for Langevin stochastic processes describing mesoscopic systems driven by conservative or non-conservative forces and interacting with thermal noise. The refinement is based…
We present an exact treatment of the thermodynamics of physical systems in the framework of the generalized uncertainty principle (GUP). Our purpose is to study and compare the consequences of two GUPs that one implies a minimal length…