Related papers: Initial-State Dependence of Thermodynamic Dissipat…
Dissipative quantum systems are frequently described within the framework of the so-called "system-plus-reservoir" approach. In this work we assign their description to the Maximum Entropy Formalism and compare the resulting thermodynamic…
A sweep through a quantum phase transition by means of a time-dependent external parameter (e.g., pressure) entails non-equilibrium phenomena associated with a break-down of adiabaticity: At the critical point, the energy gap vanishes and…
An explicit expression for the temperature of an open two-level quantum system is obtained as a function of local properties, under the hypothesis of weak interaction with the environment. This temperature is defined for both equilibrium…
Relaxation in open quantum systems is fundamental to quantum science and technologies. Yet, the influence of the initial state on relaxation remains a central, largely unanswered question. Here, by systematically characterizing the…
We propose a novel approach to define and measure the statistics of work, internal energy and dissipated heat in a driven quantum system. In our framework the presence of a physical detector arises naturally and work and its statistics can…
In the setup of isolated quantum systems, it is proved that the thermodynamic entropy and the diagonal entropy must increase extensively in any nontrivial quantum quench. The extensive increase of the thermodynamic entropy is shown for any…
Thermodynamical equilibrium is considered as an effect of quantum entangling of the vacuum state of a system. An explicit mathematical model of multi- particle entangled pure quantum states is developed and analyzed. In the framework, the…
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…
Thermodynamic entropy is not an entirely satisfactory measure of information of a quantum state. This entropy for an unknown pure state is zero, although repeated measurements on copies of such a pure state do communicate information. In…
We identify and study classes of initial states in integrable quantum systems that, after the relaxation dynamics following a sudden quench, lead to near-thermal expectation values of few-body observables. In the systems considered here,…
Thermodynamic principles are often deceptively simple and yet surprisingly powerful. We show how a simple rule, such as the net flow of energy in and out of a moving atom under nonequilibrium steady state condition, can expose the…
The second law of thermodynamics can be expressed in terms of entropy production, which can be used to quantify the degree of irreversibility of a process. In this Chapter, we consider the standard scenario of open quantum systems, where a…
We investigate dynamical equilibration of expectation values in closed quantum systems for realistic non-equilibrium initial states. Thereby we find that the corresponding long time expectation values depend on the initial expectation…
A new microcanonical equilibrium state is introduced for quantum systems with finite-dimensional state spaces. Equilibrium is characterised by a uniform distribution on a level surface of the expectation value of the Hamiltonian. The…
Open quantum systems are studied from the thermodynamical point of view unifying the principle of maximum informational entropy and the hypothesis of relaxation times hierarchy. The result of the unification is a non-Markovian and local in…
The selection of an equilibrium state by maximising the entropy of a system, subject to certain constraints, is often powerfully motivated as an exercise in logical inference, a procedure where conclusions are reached on the basis of…
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…
Many thermodynamic relations involve inequalities, with equality if a process does not involve dissipation. In this article we provide equalities in which the dissipative contribution is shown to involve the relative entropy (a.k.a.…
The assumption that quantum systems relax to a stationary state in the long-time limit underpins statistical physics and much of our intuitive understanding of scientific phenomena. For isolated systems this follows from the eigenstate…
To control and utilize quantum features in small scale for practical applications such as quantum transport, it is crucial to gain deep understanding of quantum characteristics of states such as coherence. Here by introducing a technique…