Related papers: Quantum mechanical work
Quantum work is usually determined from two projective measurements of the energy at the beginning and at the end of a thermodynamic process. However, this paradigm cannot be considered thermodynamically consistent as it does not account…
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…
We treat a quantum mechanical system with certain general properties which are expected to be common in macroscopic quantum systems. Starting from a PURE initial state (which may not describe an equilibrium) in which energy is mildly…
Several prior attempts to formulate the Laws of Thermodynamics for a small region within a larger quantum system have led to inconsistencies and unexplained infinities. The entropy and external work, in particular, require careful analysis…
Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…
There are both practical and foundational motivations to consider the thermodynamics of quantum systems at small scales. Here we address the issue of autonomous quantum thermal machines that are tailored to achieve some specific…
One of the most important goals in quantum thermodynamics is to demonstrate advantages of thermodynamic protocols over their classical counterparts. For that, it is necessary to (i) develop theoretical tools and experimental set-ups to deal…
We set up a framework for quantum stochastic thermodynamics based solely on experimentally controllable, but otherwise arbitrary interventions at discrete times. Using standard assumptions about the system-bath dynamics and insights from…
Quantum measurement is ultimately a physical process, resulting from an interaction between the measured system and a measuring apparatus. Considering the physical process of measurement within a thermodynamic context naturally raises the…
Thermodynamics was developed in the XIXth century to provide a physical description to engines and other macroscopic thermal machines. Since then, progress in nanotechnologies urged to extend these formalism, initially designed for…
How should one define thermodynamic quantities (internal energy, work, heat, etc.) for quantum systems coupled to their environments strongly? We examine three (classically equivalent) definitions of a quantum system's internal energy under…
Constraints on work extraction are fundamental to our operational understanding of the thermodynamics of both classical and quantum systems. In the quantum setting, finite-time control operations typically generate coherence in the…
Thermodynamics is traditionally concerned with systems comprised of a large number of particles. Here we present a framework for extending thermodynamics to individual quantum systems, including explicitly a thermal bath and work-storage…
In this contribution, we aim to illustrate how quantum work statistics can be used as a tool in order to gain insight on the universal features of non-equilibrium many-body systems. Focusing on the two point measurement approach to work, we…
Traditional quantum thermodynamic frameworks associate work to energy exchanges induced by unitary transformations generated by external controls, and heat to energy exchanges induced by bath interaction. Recently, a framework was…
Despite the increasing interest, the research field which studies the concepts of work and heat at quantum level has suffered from two main drawbacks: first, the difficulty to properly define and measure the work, heat and internal energy…
We propose a definition of externally measurable quantum work in driven systems. Work is given as a quantum observable on a control device which is forcing the system and can be determined without knowledge of the system Hamiltonian…
How to rigorously define thermodynamic quantities such as heat, work, and internal energy in open quantum systems driven far from equilibrium remains a significant open question in quantum thermodynamics. Heat is a quantity whose…
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…
Thermodynamics is based on a coarse-grained approach, from which its fundamental variables emerge, effectively erasing the complicate details of the microscopic dynamics within a macroscopic system. The strength of Thermodynamics lies in…