Related papers: Open-system approach to nonequilibrium quantum the…
Von Neumann entropy rate for open quantum systems is, in general, written in terms of entropy production and entropy flow rates, encompassing the second law of thermodynamics. When the open-quantum-system evolution corresponds to a quantum…
Dissipative adaptation is a general thermodynamic mechanism that explains self-organization in a broad class of driven classical many-body systems. It establishes how the most likely (adapted) states of a system subjected to a given drive…
We develop a perturbation theory of quantum (and classical) master equations with slowly varying parameters, applicable to systems which are externally controlled on a time scale much longer than their characteristic relaxation time. We…
There is presently considerable interest in accurately simulating the evolution of open systems for which Markovian master equations fail. Examples are systems that are time-dependent and/or strongly damped. A number of elegant methods have…
Investigations of quantum and mesoscopic thermodynamics force one to answer two fundamental questions associated with the foundations of statistical mechanics: (i) how does macroscopic irreversibility emerge from microscopic reversibility?…
A version of the second law of thermodynamics states that one cannot lower the energy of an isolated system by a cyclic operation. We prove this law without introducing statistical ensembles and by resorting only to quantum mechanics. We…
We study thermodynamic limits when controllers operate with only partial observability of internal correlations in multipartite systems. Understanding the costs imposed by lack of information is crucial in settings where agents must act…
We present a general and practical theoretical framework to investigate how energy is dissipated in open quantum system dynamics. This is done by quantifying the contributions of individual bath components to the overall dissipation of the…
Entanglement is central both to the foundations of quantum theory and, as a novel resource, to quantum information science. The theory of entanglement establishes basic laws, such as the non-increase of entanglement under local operations,…
From a new rigorous formulation of the general axiomatic foundations of thermodynamics we derive an operational definition of entropy that responds to the emergent need in many technological frameworks to understand and deploy thermodynamic…
We introduce an ergotropy-based formulation of quantum thermodynamics, which provides a strong connection between average heat and von Neumann entropy. By adopting this formulation, we can reinterpret the infinitesimal average heat in terms…
We model the dynamics of a closed quantum system brought out of mechanical equilibrium, undergoing a non-driven, spontaneous, thermodynamic transformation. In particular, we consider a quantum particle in a box with a moving and insulating…
The statistical mechanical description of small systems staying in thermal equilibrium with an environment can be achieved by means of the Hamiltonian of mean force. In contrast to the reduced density matrix of an open quantum system, or…
The non-Markovian dynamics of a charged particle linearly coupled to a neutral bosonic heat bath is investigated in an external uniform magnetic field. The analytical expressions for the time-dependent and asymptotic friction and diffusion…
The second law of thermodynamics places a limitation into which states a system can evolve into. For systems in contact with a heat bath, it can be combined with the law of energy conservation, and it says that a system can only evolve into…
The study of open quantum systems often relies on approximate master equations derived under the assumptions of weak coupling to the environment. However when the system is made of several interacting subsystems such a derivation is in many…
The adiabatic approximation exhibits wide applicability in quantum mechanics, providing a simple approach for nontransitional dynamics in quantum systems governed by slowly varying time-dependent Hamiltonians. However, the standard…
The example provided in the comment [arXiv:0803.2241] concerns a situation where the system is initially at negative temperature. It is known that in such cases the Law of Entropy Decrease holds. Nevertheless, this does not challenge the…
We theoretically study a simple non-equilibrium quantum network whose dynamics can be expressed and exactly solved in terms of a time-local master equation. Specifically, we consider a pair of coupled fermionic modes, each one locally…
We introduce the idea of weakly coherent collisional models, where the elements of an environment interacting with a system of interest are prepared in states that are approximately thermal, but have an amount of coherence proportional to a…