Related papers: Reversing the direction of heat flow using quantum…
We study the relaxation of a quantum system towards the thermal equilibrium using tools developed within the context of quantum information theory. We consider a model in which the system is a qubit, and reaches equilibrium after several…
The performance characteristics of a heat rectifier and a heat pump are studied in a non Markovian framework. The device is constructed from a molecule connected to a hot and cold reservoir. The heat baths are modelled using the stochastic…
Clausius' statement of the second law of thermodynamics reads: Heat will flow spontaneously from a hot to cold reservoir. This statement should hold for transport of energy through a quantum network composed of small subsystems each coupled…
We consider thermal machines powered by locally equilibrium reservoirs that share classical or quantum correlations. The reservoirs are modelled by the so-called collisional model or repeated interactions model. In our framework, two…
Thermodynamics plays an important role both in the foundations of physics and in technological applications. An operational perspective adopted in recent years is to formulate it as a quantum resource theory. At the core of this theory is…
This Colloquium is a fast journey through the build-up of key thermodynamical concepts, i.e. work, heat and irreversibility -- and how they relate to information. Born at the time of industrial revolution to optimize the exploitation of…
Quantum thermodynamics and quantum information are two frameworks for employing quantum mechanical systems for practical tasks, exploiting genuine quantum features to obtain advantages with respect to classical implementations. While…
Accurately describing work extraction from a quantum system is a central objective for the extension of thermodynamics to individual quantum systems. The concepts of work and heat are surprisingly subtle when generalizations are made to…
The laws of thermodynamics, despite their wide range of applicability, are known to break down when systems are correlated with their environments. Here, we generalize thermodynamics to physical scenarios which allow presence of…
Why do quantum evolutions occur and why do they stop at certain points? In classical thermodynamics affinity was introduced to predict in which direction an irreversible process proceeds. In this paper the quantum mechanical counterpart of…
We describe a numerical scheme for exactly simulating the heat current behavior in a quantum harmonic chain with self-consistent reservoirs. Numerically-exact results are compared to classical simulations and to the quantum behavior under…
We consider open quantum systems weakly coupled to thermal reservoirs and subjected to quantum feedback operations triggered with or without delay by monitored quantum jumps. We establish a thermodynamic description of such system and…
We study thermoelectric currents of neutral, fermionic atoms flowing through a mesoscopic channel connecting a hot and a cold reservoir across the superfluid transition. The thermoelectric response results from a competition between…
The theory of quantum thermodynamics investigates how the concepts of heat, work, and temperature can be carried over to the quantum realm, where fluctuations and randomness are fundamentally unavoidable. Of particular practical relevance…
We study first-order phase transitions in a two-temperature system, where due to the time-scale separation all the basic thermodynamical quantities (free energy, entropy, etc) are well-defined. The sign of the latent heat is found to be…
Considering an entropy-based division of energy transferred into heat and work, we develop an alternative theoretical framework for the thermodynamic analysis of two-level systems. When comparing these results with those obtained under the…
Recent work using tools from quantum information theory has shown that at the nanoscale where quantum effects become prevalent, there is not one thermodynamical second law but many. Derivations of these laws assume that an experimenter has…
We consider a situation where an $N$-level system (NLS) is coupled successively to two heat baths with different temperatures without being necessarily thermalized and approaches a steady state. For this situation we apply a general…
Thermal management is a key challenge, both globally and microscopically in integrated circuits and quantum technologies. The associated heat flow $I_Q$ has been understood since the advent of thermodynamics by a process of elimination,…
A key quantity characterizing a time-periodically forced quantum system coupled to a heat bath is the energy flowing in the steady state through the system into the bath, where it is dissipated. We derive a general expression which allows…