Related papers: Initial-State Dependence of Thermodynamic Dissipat…
A system composed of identical spins and described by a quantum mechanical pure state is analyzed within the statistical framework presented in Part I of this work. We explicitly derive the typical values of the entropy, of the energy, and…
Classical thermodynamics is unrivalled in its range of applications and relevance to everyday life. It enables a description of complex systems, made up of microscopic particles, in terms of a small number of macroscopic quantities, such as…
We derive dynamics-independent upper bounds on achievable quantum state transformations. Modeling the evolution as a joint unitary on the system and its environment, we show that the R\'enyi divergence between the initial system state and…
We consider a periodic quantum clock based on cooperative resonance fluorescence at zero temperature. In the quantum case, this system has an exact steady state and the limit cycle appears in conditional quantum dynamics under homodyne…
We introduce a quantum stochastic dynamics for heat conduction. A multi-level subsystem is coupled to reservoirs at different temperatures. Energy quanta are detected in the reservoirs allowing the study of steady state fluctuations of the…
The information on a quantum process acquired through measurements plays a crucial role in the determination of its non-equilibrium thermodynamic properties. We report on the experimental inference of the stochastic entropy production rate…
Quantum thermodynamics aims at investigating both the emergence and the limits of the laws of thermodynamics from a quantum mechanical microscopic approach. In this scenario, thermodynamic processes with no heat exchange, namely, adiabatic…
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…
This paper addresses fundamental aspects of statistical mechanics such as the motivation of a classical state space with spontaneous transitions, the meaning of non-equilibrium in the context of thermalization, and the justification of…
This paper tries to probe the relation between the local distinguishability of orthogonal quantum states and the distillation of entanglement. An new interpretation for the distillation of entanglement and the distinguishability of…
The many-body physics at quantum phase transitions shows a subtle interplay between quantum and thermal fluctuations, emerging in the low-temperature limit. In this review, we first give a pedagogical introduction to the equilibrium…
The relationship between thermodynamics and statistical physics is valid in the thermodynamic limit - when the number of particles becomes very large. Here, we study thermodynamics in the opposite regime - at both the nano scale, and when…
The work done when a system at thermal equilibrium is externally driven by a unitary control parameter leads to irreversible entropy production. The entropy produced can be thought of as a combination of coherence generation and a…
We introduce a new theoretical approach to dissipative quantum systems. By means of a continuous sequence of infinitesimal unitary transformations, we decouple the small quantum system that one is interested in from its thermodynamically…
Thermodynamics plays an important role both in the foundations of physics and in technological applications. An operational perspective adopted in recent years is to formulate it as a quantum resource theory. At the core of this theory is…
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 prove a lower bound on the relative entropy between two finite-dimensional states in terms of their entropy difference and the dimension of the underlying space. The inequality is tight in the sense that equality can be attained for any…
This paper studies the energy decoherence of an interacting quantum system. It first reviews the experiments that motivated the postulates of quantum mechanics. It then discusses a decoherence that occurs dynamically in a closed system.…
From a new rigorous formulation of the general axiomatic foundations of thermodynamics we derive an operational definition of entropy that responds to the emergent need in many technological frameworks to understand and deploy thermodynamic…
Stochastic thermodynamics is formulated under the assumption of perfect knowledge of all thermodynamic parameters. However, in any real-world experiment, there is non-zero uncertainty about the precise value of temperatures, chemical…