Related papers: Autonomous conversion of information to work in qu…
The energy cost of measurement is an interesting fundamental question, and may have profound implications for quantum technologies. In the context of Maxwell's demon, it is often stated that measurement has no minimum energy cost, while…
While externally driven information engines are well understood, the thermodynamic constraints of their autonomous counterparts remain an open question. Here, we investigate the finite-time operation of an autonomous machine functioning as…
While quantum measurement theories are built around density matrices and observables, the laws of thermodynamics are based on processes such as are used in heat engines and refrigerators. The study of quantum thermodynamics fuses these two…
Even though the second law of thermodynamics holds the supreme position among the laws of nature, as stated by many distinguished scientists, notably Eddington and Einstein, its position appears to be also quite peculiar. Given the atomic…
Accurate information processing is crucial both in technology and in nature. To achieve it, any information processing system needs an initial supply of resources away from thermal equilibrium. Here we establish a fundamental limit on the…
We treat a quantum mechanical system with certain general properties which are expected to be common in macroscopic quantum systems. Starting from a PURE initial state (which may not describe an equilibrium) in which energy is mildly…
To induce transport, detailed balance must be broken. A common mechanism is to bias the dynamics with a thermodynamic fuel, such as chemical energy. An intriguing, alternative strategy is for a Maxwell demon to effect the bias using…
With a class of quantum heat engines which consists of two-energy-eigenstate systems undergoing, respectively, quantum adiabatic processes and energy exchanges with heat baths at different stages of a cycle, we are able to clarify some…
Recent advances in experimental techniques allow one to measure and control systems at the level of single molecules and atoms. Here gaining information about fluctuating thermodynamic quantities is crucial for understanding nonequilibrium…
We show that the conservation and the non-additivity of the information, together with the additivity of the entropy make the entropy increase in an isolated system. The collapse of the entangled quantum state offers an example of the…
We proposed the finite-time cycle model of a measurement-based quantum cooler, where invasive measurement provides the power to drive the cooling cycle. Such a cooler may be regarded as an alternative thought experiment of Mawell's demon.…
In quantum thermodynamics, the decomposition of energy exchanges into heat and work remains an open problem beyond weak-coupling and slow-driving regimes. Recent formulations have shown that quantum coherence introduces additional energy…
A new thermodynamic inequality is derived which leads to the maximum work that can be extracted from multi-heat baths with the assistance of discrete quantum feedback control. The maximum work is determined by the free-energy difference and…
The thermodynamic behavior of out-of-equilibrium quantum systems in finite-time dynamics encompasses the description of energy fluctuations, which dictates a series of system's physical properties. In addition, strong interactions in…
A basic task of information processing is information transfer (flow). Here we study a pair of Brownian particles each coupled to a thermal bath at temperature $T_1$ and $T_2$, respectively. The information flow in such a system is defined…
Assigning the variations of internal energy into heat or work contributions is a challenging task due to the fact that these properties are trajectory dependent. A number of proposals have been put forward for open quantum systems following…
In recent years we have witnessed a concentrated effort to make sense of thermodynamics for small-scale systems. One of the main difficulties is to capture a suitable notion of work that models realistically the purpose of quantum machines,…
Non-equilibrium quantum thermodynamics is essential to describe new devices that operate far from the regime where the usual thermodynamical laws are obeyed. When quantum fluctuations dominate, defining and measuring work and heat, two…
Quantum dynamics controlled by a time-dependent coupling constant are studied. It is proven that an energy eigenstate expectation value of work done by the system in a quench process cannot exceed the work in the corresponding quasi-static…
Thermodynamics and information have intricate interrelations. Often thermodynamics is considered to be the logical premise to justify that information is physical - through Landauer's principle -, thereby also linking information and…