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Accurately describing work extraction from a quantum system is a central objective for the extension of thermodynamics to individual quantum systems. The concepts of work and heat are surprisingly subtle when generalizations are made to…
In this paper we aim to push the analogy between thermodynamics and quantum resource theories one step further. Previous inspirations were based predominantly on thermodynamic considerations concerning scenarios with a single heat bath,…
We take the perspective of open quantum systems and examine from their nonequilibrium dynamics the conditions when the physical quantities, their relations and the laws of thermodynamics become well defined and viable for quantum many body…
Quantum thermodynamics is an emerging research field aiming to extend standard thermodynamics and non-equilibrium statistical physics to ensembles of sizes well below the thermodynamic limit, in non-equilibrium situations, and with the full…
This Colloquium is a fast journey through the build-up of key thermodynamical concepts, i.e. work, heat and irreversibility -- and how they relate to information. Born at the time of industrial revolution to optimize the exploitation of…
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…
We review the basic idea behind resource theories, where we quantify quantum resources by specifying a restricted class of operations. This divides the state space into various sets, including states which are free (because they can be…
Considering an entropy-based division of energy transferred into heat and work, we develop an alternative theoretical framework for the thermodynamic analysis of two-level systems. When comparing these results with those obtained under the…
A large class of isolated quantum system in a pure state can equilibrate and serve as a heat bath. We show that once the equilibrium is reached, any of its subsystems that is much smaller than the isolated system is thermalized such that…
Engines are systems and devices that convert one form of energy into another, typically into a more useful form that can perform work. In the classical setup, physical, chemical, and biological engines largely involve the conversion of heat…
We extend the tools of quantum resource theories to scenarios in which multiple quantities (or resources) are present, and their interplay governs the evolution of physical systems. We derive conditions for the interconversion of these…
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…
The first law of thermodynamics imposes not just a constraint on the energy-content of systems in extreme quantum regimes, but also symmetry-constraints related to the thermodynamic processing of quantum coherence. We show that this…
After a brief historical perspective, we introduce the key notions of work and heat for quantum systems, to then apply them to quantum engines operating on quantum Otto and Carnot cycles. The irreversible and dissipative character of the…
The thermodynamics of small quantum many-body systems strongly coupled to a heat bath at low temperatures with non-Markovian behavior are new challenges for quantum thermodynamics, as traditional thermodynamics is built on large systems…
It is a central question in quantum thermodynamics to determine how irreversible is a process that transforms an initial state $\rho$ to a final state $\sigma$, and whether such irreversibility can be thought of as a useful resource. For…
The first law of thermodynamics restates the law of conservation of energy. It partitions the change in energy of a system into two pieces, heat and work. While there is no ambiguity to define heat and work in classical thermodynamics,…
Information processing, quantum or classical, relies on channels transforming multiple input states to different corresponding outputs. Previous research has established bounds on the thermodynamic resources required for such operations,…
In these decades, it has been revealed that there is rich information-theoretic structure in thermodynamics of out-of-equilibrium systems in both the classical and quantum regimes. This has led to the fruitful interplay among statistical…
The second law of thermodynamics is the cornerstone of physics, characterizing the convertibility between thermodynamic states through a single function, entropy. Given the universal applicability of thermodynamics, a fundamental question…