Related papers: Multiscale Thermodynamics: Energy, Entropy, and Sy…
The theory of small-system thermodynamics was originally developed to extend the laws of thermodynamics to length scales of nanometers. Here we review this "nanothermodynamics," and stress how it also applies to large systems that subdivide…
Nanothermodynamics extends standard thermodynamics to facilitate finite-size effects on the scale of nanometers. A key ingredient is Hill's subdivision potential that accommodates the non-extensive energy of independent small systems,…
Nanothermodynamics provides the theoretical foundation for understanding stable distributions of statistically independent subsystems inside larger systems. In this review it is emphasized that adapting ideas from nanothermodynamics to…
Thermodynamics makes definite predictions about the thermal behavior of macroscopic systems in and out of equilibrium. Statistical mechanics aims to derive this behavior from the dynamics and statistics of the atoms and molecules making up…
A few decades after Hill's work on nano-thermodynamics, the development of a thermodynamic framework, to account consistently for the fluctuations of small systems due to their interactions with the surrounding environment, is still…
Small thermodynamic systems exhibit peculiar behavior different from that observed in long-scale systems. Non-equilibrium processes taking place in those systems are strongly influenced by the presence of fluctuations which can be large.…
Recent progress in the synthesis and processing of nano-structured materials and systems calls for an improved understanding of thermal properties on small length scales. In this context, the question whether thermodynamics and, in…
Small quantum systems non-weakly coupled to a bath become in the quantum regime surrounded by a cloud of photons or phonons, which modifies their thermodynamic behavior. Exactly solvable examples are the Brownian motion of a quantum…
The 2nd law of thermodynamics yields an irreversible increase in entropy until thermal equilibrium is achieved. This irreversible increase is often assumed to require large and complex systems to emerge from the reversible microscopic laws…
Potential applications of quantum dots in the nanotechnology industry make these systems an important field of study in various areas of physics. In particular, thermodynamics has a significant role in technological innovations. With this…
Rich quantum effects emerge when several quantum systems are indistinguishable from the point of view of the bath they interact with. In particular, delocalised excitations corresponding to coherent superposition of excited states appear…
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 grand canonical ensemble lies at the core of quantum and classical statistical mechanics. A small system thermalizes to this ensemble while exchanging heat and particles with a bath. A quantum system may exchange quantities represented…
A model for the thermodynamics of a quantum heat bath is introduced. Under the assumption that the bath molecules have finitely many degrees of freedom and are weakly interacting, we present a general derivation of the equation of state of…
We present a maximum entropy approach to analyze the internal dynamics of a small system in contact with a large bath e.g. a solute-solvent system. For the small solute, the fluctuations around the mean values of observables are not…
The issue of the thermodynamics of a system of distinguishable particles is discussed in this paper. In constructing the statistical mechanics of distinguishable particles from the definition of Boltzmann entropy, it is found that the…
An ensemble of classical subsystems interacting with surrounding particles has been considered. In general case, a phase volume of the subsystems ensemble was shown to be a function of time. The evolutional equations of the ensemble are…
The microcanonical ensemble has long been a starting point for the development of thermodynamics from statistical mechanics. However, this approach presents two problems. First, it predicts that the entropy is only defined on a discrete set…
Describing open quantum systems far from equilibrium is challenging, in particular when the environment is mesoscopic, when it develops nonequilibrium features during the evolution, or when the memory effects cannot be disregarded. Here, we…
It is argued that a typical many body energy eigenstate has a well defined thermodynamic entropy and that individual eigenstates possess thermodynamic characteristics analogous to those of generic isolated systems. We examine large systems…