Related papers: Energetic footprints of irreversibility in the qua…
Quantum decoherence is seen as an undesired source of irreversibility that destroys quantum resources. Quantum coherences seem to be a property that vanishes at thermodynamic equilibrium. Away from equilibrium, quantum coherences challenge…
We study the modification of the second law of thermodynamics for a quantum system interacting with a reservoir regarding quantum coherence. The whole system is isolated so that neither energy nor information is lost. It is discovered that…
Thermodynamic irreversibility is well characterized by the entropy production arising from non-equilibrium quantum processes. We show that the entropy production of a quantum system undergoing open-system dynamics can be formally split into…
Exploiting the relative entropy of coherence, we isolate the coherent contribution in the energetics of a driven non-equilibrium quantum system. We prove that a division of the irreversible work can be made into a coherent and incoherent…
The entropy production in dissipative processes is the essence of the arrow of time and the second law of thermodynamics. For dissipation of quantum systems, it was recently shown that the entropy production contains indeed two…
Entropy production is a key quantity in any finite-time thermodynamic process. It is intimately tied with the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, embodying a tool to extend thermodynamic considerations all the way to non-equilibrium…
It is a central question in quantum thermodynamics to determine how irreversible is a process that transforms an initial state $\rho$ to a final state $\sigma$, and whether such irreversibility can be thought of as a useful resource. For…
Quantum open systems evolve according to completely positive, trace preserving maps acting on the density operator, which can equivalently be unraveled in term of so-called quantum trajectories. These stochastic sequences of pure states…
Entropy production is a fundamental concept that plays a crucial role in the second law of thermodynamics and the measure of irreversibility. It imposes rigorous constraints on the kinds of transformations allowed in thermodynamic…
We discuss the thermodynamics of closed quantum systems driven out of equilibrium by a change in a control parameter and undergoing a unitary process. We compare the work actually done on the system with the one that would be performed…
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…
In thermodynamics, quantum coherences - superpositions between energy eigenstates - behave in distinctly nonclassical ways. Recently mathematical frameworks have emerged to account for these features and have provided a range of novel…
Entanglement within a given device provides a potential resource for quantum information processing. Entanglement between system and environment leads to decoherence (thus suppressing non-classical features within the system) but also opens…
Constraints on work extraction are fundamental to our operational understanding of the thermodynamics of both classical and quantum systems. In the quantum setting, finite-time control operations typically generate coherence in the…
It is an established fact that quantum coherences have thermodynamic value. The natural question arises, whether other genuine quantum properties such as entanglement can also be exploited to extract thermodynamic work. In the present…
The thermodynamics of quantum systems coupled to periodically modulated heat baths and work reservoirs is developed. By identifying affinities and fluxes, the first and second law are formulated consistently. In the linear response regime,…
Recent studies have pointed out the intrinsic dependence of figures of merit of thermodynamic relevance -- such as work, heat and entropy production -- on the amount of quantum coherences that is made available to a system. However, whether…
Quantum coherence, the ability of a quantum system to be in a superposition of orthogonal quantum states, is a distinct feature of the quantum mechanics, thus marking a deviation from classical physics. Coherence finds its applications in…
Understanding thermodynamics far from equilibrium at the quantum scale remains a fundamental challenge, particularly in the presence of quantum coherence. Here we develop a first-principles framework for nonequilibrium quantum…
The entropy produced when a quantum system is driven away from equilibrium can be decomposed in two parts, one related with populations and the other with quantum coherences. The latter is usually based on the so-called relative entropy of…