Related papers: Imperfect Thermalizations Allow for Optimal Thermo…
We describe a symplectic approach towards thermodynamics in which thermodynamic transformations are described by (symplectic) Hamiltonian dynamics. Upon identifying the spaces of equilibrium states with Lagrangian submanifolds of a…
The consistent definition of the thermodynamic functions of small open quantum systems in contact with an environment in equilibrium with a heat bath has been the subject of many debates in the quantum community. In the present work we…
The long-time dynamics of quantum systems, typically, but not always, results in a thermal steady state. The microscopic processes that lead to or circumvent this fate are of interest, since everyday experience tells us that not all spatial…
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…
Within quantum thermodynamics, many tasks are modelled by processes that require work sources represented by out-of-equilibrium quantum systems, often dubbed quantum batteries, in which work can be deposited or from which work can be…
It is believed that thermalization in closed systems of interacting particles can occur only when the eigenstates are fully delocalized and chaotic in the preferential (unperturbed) basis of the total Hamiltonian. Here we demonstrate that…
We define thermodynamic configurations and identify two primitives of discrete quantum processes between configurations for which heat and work can be defined in a natural way. This allows us to uncover a general second law for any discrete…
The investigation of optimal processes has a long history in the field of thermodynamics. It is well known that finite-time processes that minimize dissipation often exhibit discontinuities. We use a combination of numerical and analytical…
We consider the effective behaviour of a rate-independent process when it is placed in contact with a heat bath. The method used to "thermalize" the process is an interior-point entropic regularization of the Moreau--Yosida incremental…
This review is devoted to the problem of thermalization in a small isolated conglomerate of interacting constituents. A variety of physically important systems of intensive current interest belong to this category: complex atoms, molecules…
The derivation of general performance benchmarks is important in the design of highly optimized heat engines and refrigerators. To obtain them, one may model phenomenologically the leading sources of irreversibility ending up with results…
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…
We present a theoretical framework to investigate quantum thermodynamic processes under non-Markovian system-bath interactions on the basis of the hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) approach, which is convenient to carry out…
Thermalization of isolated quantum systems has been studied intensively in recent years and significant progresses have been achieved. Here, we study thermalization of small quantum systems that interact with large chaotic environments…
This paper explores a novel connection between a thermodynamic and a dynamical systems perspective on emergent dynamical order. We provide evidence for a conjecture that Hamiltonian systems with mixed chaos spontaneously find regular…
This thesis is devoted to studying two tasks: refrigeration and the creation of correlations. In the refrigeration part, two different paradigms of cooling, namely coherent and incoherent, are defined. The connection that these paradigms…
We investigate the fundamental limitations imposed by thermodynamics for creating correlations. Considering a collection of initially uncorrelated thermal quantum systems, we ask how much classical and quantum correlations can be obtained…
I consider the generic situation where a finite number of identical test systems in varying (possibly unknown) initial states are subjected independently to the same unknown process. I show how one can infer from the output data alone…
We study the decoherence and thermalization dynamics of a nanoscale system coupled nonperturbatively to a fully quantum-mechanical bath. The system is prepared out of equilibrium in a pure state of the complete system. We propose a random…
Developing a thermodynamic theory of computation is a challenging task at the interface of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and computer science. In particular, this task requires dealing with difficulties such as stochastic halting times,…