Related papers: Anomalous Thermalization in Quantum Collective Mod…
Two approaches to small-scale and quantum thermodynamics are fluctuation relations and one-shot statistical mechanics. Fluctuation relations (such as Crooks' Theorem and Jarzynski's Equality) relate nonequilibrium behaviors to equilibrium…
Thermodynamic uncertainty principles make up one of the few rare anchors in the largely uncharted waters of nonequilibrium systems, the fluctuation theorems being the more familiar. In this work we aim to trace the uncertainties of…
We have experimentally checked the Jarzynski equality and the Crooks relation on the thermal fluctuations of a macroscopic mechanical oscillator in contact with a heat reservoir. We found that, independently of the time scale and amplitude…
For driven open systems in contact with multiple heat reservoirs, we find the marginal distributions of work or heat do not satisfy any fluctuation theorem, but only the joint distribution of work and heat satisfies a family of fluctuation…
Understanding how macroscopic systems exhibit irreversible thermal behavior has been a long-standing challenge, first brought to prominence by Boltzmann. Recent advances have established rigorous conditions for isolated quantum systems to…
We present two examples of how single-molecule experimental techniques applied to biological systems can give insight into problems within the scope of equilibrium and nonequilibrium mesoscopic thermodynamics. The first example is the…
Information plays a pivotal role in the thermodynamics of nonequilibrium processes with feedback. However, much remains to be learned about the nature of information fluctuations in small scale devices and their relation with fluctuations…
We investigate steady states of macroscopic quantum systems under dissipation not obeying the detailed balance condition. We argue that the Gibbs state at an effective temperature gives a good description of the steady state provided that…
Bridging equilibrium and nonequilibrium statistical physics attracts sustained interest. Hallmarks of nonequilibrium systems include a breakdown of detailed balance, and an absence of a priori potential function corresponding to the…
The limit of small entropy production is reached in relaxing systems long after preparation, and in stationary driven systems in the limit of small driving power. Surprisingly, for extended systems this limit is not in general the…
The problem of simulating the thermal behavior of quantum systems remains a central open challenge in quantum computing. Unlike well-established quantum algorithms for unitary dynamics, \emph{provably efficient} algorithms for preparing…
Nonequilibrium processes of small systems such as molecular machines are ubiquitous in biology, chemistry and physics, but are often challenging to comprehend. In the past two decades, several exact thermodynamic relations of nonequilibrium…
Thermalization of isolated quantum systems has been studied intensively in recent years and significant progresses have been achieved. Here, we study thermalization of small quantum systems that interact with large chaotic environments…
In their seminal work, Fermi, Pasta, Ulam and Tsingou explored the connection between statistical mechanics and dynamical properties, such as chaos and ergodicity. Even today, seventy years later, the topic is not fully understood: while…
Fluctuation theorems are relations constraining the out-of-equilibrium fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities like the entropy production that were initially introduced for classical or quantum systems in contact with a thermal bath. Here…
The deterministic and time-reversal symmetric dynamics of isolated quantum systems is at odds with irreversible equilibration observed in generic thermodynamic systems. Standard approaches at a reconciliation employ subjective restrictions…
Thermal states are the bedrock of statistical physics. Nevertheless, when and how they actually arise in closed quantum systems is not fully understood. We consider this question for systems with local Hamiltonians on finite quantum…
The standard assumption for the equilibrium microcanonical state in quantum mechanics, that the system must be in one of the energy eigenstates, is weakened so as to allow superpositions of states. The weakened form of the microcanonical…
The mathematical physics of mechanical systems in thermal equilibrium is a well studied, and relatively easy, subject, because the Gibbs distribution is in general an adequate guess for the equilibrium state. On the other hand, the…
I consider the generic situation where a finite number of identical test systems in varying (possibly unknown) initial states are subjected independently to the same unknown process. I show how one can infer from the output data alone…