Related papers: Work as an external quantum observable and an oper…
Engineering quantum operations is one of the main abilities we need for developing quantum technologies and designing new fundamental tests. Here we propose a scheme for realising a controlled operation acting on a travelling quantum field,…
From the perspective of quantum thermodynamics, realisable measurements cost work and result in measurement devices that are not perfectly correlated with the measured systems. We investigate the consequences for the estimation of work in…
"\textit{The noise is the signal}"[R. Landauer, Nature \textbf{392}, 658 (1998)] emphasizes the rich information content encoded in fluctuations. This paper assesses the dynamical role of fluctuations of a quantum system driven far from…
The work content of non-equilibrium systems in relation to a heat bath is often analyzed in terms of expectation values of an underlying random work variable. However, we show that when optimizing the expectation value of the extracted…
Quantum mechanics is widely regarded as a complete theory, yet we argue it is a tractable projection of a deeper, computationally-inaccessible classical variational structure. By analyzing the coupled partial differential equations of the…
Thermodynamics constrains changes to the energy of a system, both deliberate and random, via its first and second laws. When the system is not in equilibrium, fluctuation theorems such as the Jarzynski equality further restrict the…
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…
Evaluating the maximum amount of work extractable from a nanoscale quantum system is one of the central problems in quantum thermodynamics. Previous works identified the free energy of the input state as the optimal rate of extractable work…
Heat and work in thermodynamics refer to the measurement of changes in energy content of external bodies (baths and agents). We discuss the implications of quantum mechanics on the possibility to measure work in a mesoscopic context. The…
The concept of intrinsic and operational observables in quantum mechanics is introduced. In any realistic description of a quantum measurement that includes a macroscopic detecting device, it is possible to construct from the statistics of…
An open question of fundamental importance in thermodynamics is how to describe the fluctuations of work for quantum coherent processes. In the standard approach, based on a projective energy measurement both at the beginning and at the end…
Giving a universal upper bound on the power output of heat engines is a long-standing open problem. We tackle this problem for generic quantum machines in self-contained formulation by carefully including the switching process of the…
We consider quantum batteries given by composite interacting quantum systems in terms of the thermodynamic work cost of local random unitary processes. We characterize quantum correlations by monitoring the average energy change and its…
Free energy fixes the maximum work of a thermodynamic process once the state and Hamiltonian are specified. A work-extraction task asks a different question: how much average work can a single device realize across several preparations and…
We study the mechanical performance of quantum rotor heat engines in terms of common notions of work using two prototypical models: a mill driven by the heat flow from a hot to a cold mode, and a piston driven by the alternate heating and…
Local operators are the basic observables in quantum field theory which encode the physics observed by a local experimentalist. However, when gravity is dynamical, diffeomorphism symmetries are gauged which apparently obstructs a sensible…
The universal quantum work relation connects a functional of an arbitrary observable averaged over the forward process to the free energy difference and another functional averaged over the time-reversed process. Here, we ask the question…
Heat and work are fundamental concepts for thermodynamical systems. When these are scaled down to the quantum level they require appropriate embeddings. Here we show that the dependence of the particle spectrum on system size giving rise to…
A definition of quantum mechanical work is introduced in this dissertation, preserving the mathematical structure of the Classical Mechanics concept of work without, however, in any way invoking the notion of trajectory. By use of Gaussian…
When manipulating a quantum system $S$, its surrounding system, or \textit{environment}, $E$ induces unwanted effects. It is mainly due to its vastness and the lack of knowledge about the Hamiltonian $H_{SE}$ that governs the dynamics…