Related papers: The second law of thermodynamics from concavity of…
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,…
Regarded as one of the most fundamental concepts of classical mechanics and thermodynamics, work has received well-grounded definitions within the quantum framework since the 1970s, having being successfully applied to many contexts. Recent…
The second law of thermodynamics, formulated as an ultimate bound on the maximum extractable work, has been rigorously derived in multiple scenarios. However, the unavoidable limitations that emerge due to the lack of control on small…
We design a heat engine with multi-heat-reservoir, ancillary system and quantum memory. We then derive an inequality related with the second law of thermodynamics, and give a new limitation about the work gain from the engine by analyzing…
Many fruitful analogies have emerged between the theories of quantum entanglement and thermodynamics, motivating the pursuit of an axiomatic description of entanglement akin to the laws of thermodynamics. A long-standing open problem has…
Based on quantum statistical mechanics and microscopic quantum dynamics, we prove Planck's and Kelvin's principles for macroscopic systems in a general and realistic setting. We consider a hybrid quantum system that consists of the…
The second law of thermodynamics tells us which state transformations are so statistically unlikely that they are effectively forbidden. Its original formulation, due to Clausius, states that "Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer…
Quantum thermodynamics investigates how robust the second law of thermodynamics serves as the unique fundamental law in the small quantum world. To tackle this problem, the quantum coherence constitutes a major difficulty of investigations,…
Thermodynamics is traditionally concerned with systems comprised of a large number of particles. Here we present a framework for extending thermodynamics to individual quantum systems, including explicitly a thermal bath and work-storage…
In the classical limit no work is needed to couple a system to a bath with sufficiently weak coupling strength (or with arbitrarily finite coupling strength for a linear system) at the same temperature. In the quantum domain this may be…
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…
The role of quantum entanglement in thermodynamical systems remains elusive. Does entanglement result in thermodynamic advantages or does it impose fundamental limitations? Here, we unambiguously quantify the amount of heat and work in a…
This work presents a general unifying theoretical framework for quantum non-equilibrium systems. It is based on a re-statement of the dynamical problem as one of inferring the distribution of collision events that move a system toward…
The Brownian motion of a quantum particle in a harmonic confining potential and coupled to a harmonic quantum thermal bath is exactly solvable. It is shown that at low enough temperatures the stationary state is non-Gibbsian due to an…
We establish quantum thermodynamics for open quantum systems weakly coupled to their reservoirs when the system exhibits degeneracies. The first and second law of thermodynamics are derived, as well as a finite-time fluctuation theorem for…
The Carnot statement of the second law of thermodynamics poses an upper limit on the efficiency of all heat engines. Recently, it has been studied whether generic quantum features such as coherence and quantum entanglement could allow for…
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,…
The essential postulates of classical thermodynamics are formulated, from which the second law is deduced as the principle of increase of entropy in irreversible adiabatic processes that take one equilibrium state to another. The entropy…
The second law of thermodynamics dictates that heat flows spontaneously from a high-temperature entity to a lower-temperature one. Yet, recent advances have demonstrated that quantum correlations between a system and its thermal environment…
In the classical regime, thermodynamic state transformations are governed by the free energy. This is also called as the second law of thermodynamics. Previous works showed that, access to a catalytic system allows us to restore the second…