Related papers: Thermodynamically ideal quantum-state inputs to an…
For systems in an externally controllable time-dependent potential, the optimal protocol minimizes the mean work spent in a finite-time transition between two given equilibrium states. For overdamped dynamics which ignores inertia effects,…
The resource theory of thermal operations, an established model for small-scale thermodynamics, provides an extension of equilibrium thermodynamics to nonequilibrium situations. On a lattice of any dimension with any translation-invariant…
In the real world, one almost never knows the parameters of a thermodynamic process to infinite precision. Reflecting this, here we investigate how to extend stochastic thermodynamics to systems with uncertain parameters, including…
Free energy fixes the maximum work of a thermodynamic process once the state and Hamiltonian are specified. A work-extraction task asks a different question: how much average work can a single device realize across several preparations and…
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…
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…
Extending the quantum formulation of [Phys. Rev. X 3, 041003 (2013)] to a more general setting for studying the thermodynamics of information processing including initial correlations, we generalize the second law of thermodynamics to…
This work presents a general unifying theoretical framework for quantum non-equilibrium systems. It is based on a re-statement of the dynamical problem as one of inferring the distribution of collision events that move a system toward…
A way to construct Boltzmann entropy, i.e., the entropy as a function of a microscopic pure state, for quantum field systems is proposed. Operators that shift the field in wavevector space are used in the construction. By employing an…
A classical thermometer typically works by exchanging energy with the system being measured until it comes to equilibrium, at which point the readout is related to the final energy state of the thermometer. A recent paper noted that…
In addition to the Riemannian metricization of the thermodynamic state space, local relaxation times offer a natural time scale, too. Generalizing existing proposals, we relate {\it thermodynamic} time scale to the standard kinetic…
Steady-state quantum thermal machines are typically characterized by a continuous flow of heat between different reservoirs. However, at the level of discrete stochastic realizations, heat flow is unraveled as a series of abrupt quantum…
We propose a novel approach to define and measure the statistics of work, internal energy and dissipated heat in a driven quantum system. In our framework the presence of a physical detector arises naturally and work and its statistics can…
The extension of thermodynamic principles to active matter remains a challenge due to the non-equilibrium nature inherent to active systems. In this study, we introduce a framework to assess entropy in our minimal macroscopic experiment…
We review recent work on the foundations of thermodynamics in the light of quantum information theory. We adopt a resource-theoretic perspective, wherein thermodynamics is formulated as a theory of what agents can achieve under a particular…
A system composed of identical spins and described by a quantum mechanical pure state is analyzed within the statistical framework presented in Part I of this work. We explicitly derive the typical values of the entropy, of the energy, and…
In quantum mechanics, predictions are made by way of calculating expectation values of observables, which take the form of Hermitian operators. It is far less common to exploit non-Hermitian operators to perform measurements. Here, we show…
We put forward the concept of work extraction from thermal noise by phase-sensitive (homodyne) measurements of the noisy input followed by (outcome-dependent) unitary manipulations of the post-measured state. For optimized measurements,…
The minimal set of thermodynamic control parameters consists of a statistical (thermal) and a mechanical one. These suffice to introduce all the pertinent thermodynamic variables; thermodynamic processes can then be defined as paths on this…
Quantum thermodynamics is a research field that aims at fleshing out the ultimate limits of thermodynamic processes in the deep quantum regime. A complete picture of quantum thermodynamics allows for catalysts, i.e., systems facilitating…