Related papers: Quantum mechanical work
From the very beginning, Quantum Mechanics has been accompanied by crucial foundational questions: the possibility of visualizing physical processes, the limits of measurement epitomized by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the…
A general quantum theory encompassing Mechanics, Thermodynamics and irreversible dynamics is presented in two parts. The first part is concerned exclusively with the description of the states of any individual physical system. It is based…
If we admit that quantum mechanics (QM) is universal theory, then QM should contain also some description of classical mechanical systems. The presented text contains description of two different ways how the mathematical description of…
The validity of the Jarzynski equation for a very simple, exactly solvable quantum system is analyzed. The implications of two different definitions of work proposed in the literature are investigated. The first one derives from…
Quantum Mechanics, almost 80 years after its arrival, is a well established and experimentally not falsified theory. It has predicted and explained a whole series of natural phenomena of a very delicate nature. But its interpretation has…
One of the fundamental questions in the emerging field of quantum thermodynamics is the role played by coherence in energetic processes that occur at the quantum level. Here, we address this issue by investigating two different quantum…
Mechanics can be founded on a principle relating the uncertainty delta-q in the trajectory of an observable particle to its motion relative to the observer. From this principle, p.delta-q=const., p being the q-conjugated momentum,…
Familiar formulations of classical and quantum mechanics are shown to follow from a general theory of mechanics based on pure states with an intrinsic probability structure. This theory is developed to the stage where theorems from quantum…
The project concerns the interplay among quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, in isolated quantum systems. The underlying goal is to improve our understanding of the concept of thermal equilibrium in quantum systems.…
In these notes, based on lectures given as part of the Les Houches summer school on Quantum Optics and Nanophotonics in August, 2013, I have tried to give a brief survey of some important approaches and modern tendencies in quantum…
Originally formulated for macroscopic machines, the laws of thermodynamics were recently shown to hold for quantum systems coupled to ideal sources of work (external classical fields) and heat (systems at equilibrium). Ongoing efforts have…
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…
The paper attempts to convince that the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics does not contradict philosophical realism by throwing light onto certain properties of quantum systems that seem to have escaped attention as yet. The…
Thermodynamics teaches that if a system initially off-equilibrium is coupled to work sources, the maximum work that it may yield is governed by its energy and entropy. For finite systems this bound is usually not reachable. The maximum…
Thermodynamics is the phenomenological theory of heat and work. Here we analyze to what extent quantum thermodynamic relations are immune to the underlying mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. As a main result, we show that the…
By considering (non-relativistic) quantum mechanics as it is done in practice in particular in condensed-matter physics, it is argued that a deterministic, unitary time evolution within a chosen Hilbert space always has a limited scope,…
An analysis of quantum measurement is presented that relies on an information-theoretic description of quantum entanglement. In a consistent quantum information theory of entanglement, entropies (uncertainties) conditional on measurement…
We study quantum mechanics in the stochastic formulation, using the functional integral approach. The noise term enters the classical action as a local contribution of anticommuting fields. The partition function is not invariant under…
Quantum mechanics is derived from the principle that the universe contain as much variety as possible, in the sense of maximizing the distinctiveness of each subsystem. The quantum state of a microscopic system is defined to correspond to…
A number of issues related to measurement show that self-consistency is lacking in quantum mechanics as this theory has been generally understood. Each issue is presented as a point in this paper. Each point can be resolved by incorporating…