Related papers: Work extractability from energy eigenstates under …
The second law of thermodynamics states that for a thermally isolated system entropy never decreases. Most physical processes we observe in nature involve variations of macroscopic quantities over spatial and temporal scales much larger…
Quantum thermodynamics studies how quantum systems and operations may be exploited as sources of work to perform useful thermodynamic tasks. In real-world conditions, the evolution of open quantum systems typically displays memory effects,…
The nonequilibrium thermodynamics of interacting quantum many-body systems is investigated within the framework of thermal time-dependent density functional theory using a generalized linear-response formulation for the full quantum work…
We show that work can be extracted from a two-level system (spin) coupled to a bosonic thermal bath. This is possible due to different initial temperatures of the spin and the bath, both positive (no spin population inversion) and is…
Extremal principles are fundamental in our interpretation of phenomena in nature. One of the best known examples is the second law of thermodynamics, governing most physical and chemical systems and stating the continuous increase of…
We introduce a thermodynamic work extraction task that describes the energy storage enhancement of quantum systems, which is naturally related to quantum battery's charging process. This task induces majorisation-like conditions that…
We investigate work extraction protocols designed to transfer the maximum possible energy to a battery using sequential access to $N$ copies of an unknown pure qubit state. The core challenge is designing interactions to optimally balance…
In this contribution, we aim to illustrate how quantum work statistics can be used as a tool in order to gain insight on the universal features of non-equilibrium many-body systems. Focusing on the two point measurement approach to work, we…
To reconstruct thermodynamics based on the microscopic laws is one of the most important unfulfilled goals of statistical physics. Here, we show that the first law and the second law for adiabatic processes are derived from an assumption…
Work can be extracted from a single heat bath if additional information is available. For the paradigmatic case of a Brownian particle in a harmonic potential, whose position has been measured with finite precision, we determine the optimal…
The nature of the behaviour of an isolated many-body quantum system periodically driven in time has been an open question since the beginning of quantum mechanics. After an initial transient, such a system is known to synchronize with the…
The work distribution function for a non-relativistic, non-interacting quantum many-body system interacting with classical external sources is investigated. Exact expressions for the characteristic function corresponding to the work…
Quantum thermodynamics allows for the interconversion of quantum coherence and mechanical work. Quantum coherence is thus a potential physical resource for quantum machines. However, formulating a general nonequilibrium thermodynamics of…
We prove the second law of thermodynamics and the nonequilibirum fluctuation theorem for pure quantum states.The entire system obeys reversible unitary dynamics, where the initial state of the heat bath is not the canonical distribution but…
Since the first suggestion of the Jarzynski equality many derivations of this equality have been presented in both, the classical and the quantum context. While the approaches and settings greatly differ from one to another, they all appear…
The emergence of irreversibility in physical processes, despite the fundamentally reversible nature of quantum mechanics, remains an open question in physics. This thesis explores the intricate relationship between quantum mechanics and…
Developments in the thermodynamics of small quantum systems envisage non-classical thermal machines. In this scenario, energy fluctuations play a relevant role in the description of irreversibility. We experimentally implement a quantum…
I give a self-contained introduction to the resource theory approach to quantum thermodynamics. I will introduce in an elementary manner the technical machinery necessary to unpack and prove the core statements of the theory. The topics…
We consider overdamped Brownian particles with two degrees of freedom (DoF) that are confined in a time-varying quadratic potential and are in simultaneous contact with heat baths of different temperatures along the respective DoF. The…
The irreversible entropy increase described by the second law of thermodynamics is fundamentally tied to thermalization and the emergence of equilibrium. In the first part of our work (Ref: arXiv.2503.04152), we constructed an isolated gas…