Related papers: Increasing extractable work in small qubit landsca…
We derive generic upper bounds on the rate of purity change and entropy increase for open quantum systems. These bounds depend solely on the generators of the nonunitary dynamics and are independent of the particular states of the systems.…
How much work can be extracted from a heat bath using a thermal machine? The study of this question has a very long tradition in statistical physics in the weak-coupling limit, applied to macroscopic systems. However, the assumption that…
This paper presents a nonequilibrium, first-principles, thermodynamic-ensemble based model for the relaxation process of interacting non-equilibrium systems. This model is formulated using steepest-entropy-ascent quantum thermodynamics…
We reveal several distinct regimes of the relaxation dynamics of a small quantum system coupled to an environment within the plane of the dissipation strength and the reservoir temperature. This is achieved by discriminating between…
In an isolated quantum many-body system undergoing unitary evolution, the entropy of a subsystem (smaller than half the system size) thermalizes if at long times, it is to leading order equal to the thermodynamic entropy of the subsystem at…
We study the entanglement dynamics and relaxation properties of a system of two interacting qubits in the two cases (I) two independent bosonic baths and (II) one common bath, at temperature T. The entanglement dynamics is studied in terms…
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…
Understanding the dynamics of open quantum systems is a highly important task for the implementation of emerging quantum technologies. To make the problem tractable theoretically, it is common to neglect initial system-environment…
Quantum correlations that typically develop between a quantum battery and its charger reduce the amount of work extractable from the battery. We show that by coupling the system with an additional environment that can be continuously…
The influence of the initial preparation on dephasing in open quantum dynamics is studied using an exactly solvable model of a two-level system (qubit) interacting with a bosonic bath. It is found that for some classes of non-selective…
We investigate the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of pure decoherence. In a pure decoherence process, the system Hamiltonian is a constant of motion and there is no direct energy exchange between the system and its surroundings.…
The Markovian evolution of an open quantum system is characterized by a positive entropy production, while the global entropy gets redistributed between the system and the environment degrees of freedom. Starting from these premises, we…
We introduce an alternative way to understand the decomposition of a quantum system into interacting parts and show that it is natural in several physical models. This enables us to define a reduced density operator for a working system…
Interacting quantum systems evolving from an uncorrelated composite initial state generically develop quantum correlations -- entanglement. As a consequence, a local description of interacting quantum system is impossible as a rule. A…
Intriguing features of the distance between two arbitrary states of an open quantum system are identified that are induced by initial system-environment correlations. As an example, we analyze a qubit dephasingly coupled to a bosonic…
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…
A small quantum absorption refrigerator, consisting of three qubits, is discussed in the transient regime. We discuss time scales for coherent dynamics, damping, and approach to the steady state, and we study cooling and entanglement. We…
In standard treatments of open quantum systems, the reduced dynamics is described starting from the assumption that the system and the environment are initially uncorrelated. This assumption, however, is not always guaranteed in realistic…
We present a simple model system with four hard disks moving in a circular region for which free energy landscapes can be directly calculated and visualized in two and three dimensions. We construct several energy landscapes for our system…
Isolated quantum systems follow the unitary evolution, which guarantees the full many body state always keeps a constant entropy as its initial one. In comparison, the local subsystems exhibit relaxation behavior and evolve towards certain…