Related papers: Universality and classification of elementary ther…
A universal Turing machine is a powerful concept - a single device can compute any function that is computable. A universal spin model, similarly, is a class of physical systems whose low energy behavior simulates that of any spin system.…
Consider a quantum system $S$ weakly interacting with a very large but finite system $B$ called the heat bath, and suppose that the composite $S\cup B$ is in a pure state $\Psi$ with participating energies between $E$ and $E+\delta$ with…
Fluctuation theorems are fundamental extensions of the second law of thermodynamics for small nonequilibrium systems. While work and heat are equally important forms of energy exchange, fluctuation relations have not been experimentally…
We study several variations of the question of minimum-error discrimination of thermal states. Besides of providing the optimal values for the probability of error, we also characterize the optimal measurements. For the case of a fixed…
The finite scope of the some elementary interactions is usually presented to Physics students as a natural consequence of the time-energy uncertainty relation. It is demonstrated that this heuristic derivation is not a priori valid.…
Stochastic thermodynamics as reviewed here systematically provides a framework for extending the notions of classical thermodynamics like work, heat and entropy production to the level of individual trajectories of well-defined…
This paper initiates the systematic study of thermal field theory for generic equilibrium density matrices, which feature arbitrary values not only of temperature and chemical potentials, but also of average angular momentum. The focus here…
We outline the construction of a molecular system that could, in principle, implement a thermodynamically reversible Universal Turing Machine (UTM). By proposing a concrete-albeit idealised-design and operational protocol, we reveal…
The unrivaled robustness of topologically ordered states of matter against perturbations has immediate applications in quantum computing and quantum metrology, yet their very existence poses a challenge to our understanding of phase…
Over the past decade, substantial progress has been made in clarifying a central question of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou problem: whether weakly nonlinear lattice systems thermalize and, if so, through what mechanisms. The current…
Physical kinetic roughening processes are well known to exhibit universal scaling of observables that fluctuate in space and time. Are there analogous dynamic scaling laws that are unique to the chemical reaction mechanisms available…
By combining different ideas, a general and efficient protocol to deal with discontinuous phase transitions at low temperatures is proposed. For small $T$'s, it is possible to derive a generic analytic expression for appropriate order…
Thermalization of classical fields is investigated in a \phi^4 scalar field theory in 1+1 dimensions, discretized on a lattice. We numerically integrate the classical equations of motion using initial conditions sampled from various…
According to the second law of thermodynamics, for every transformation performed on a system which is in contact with an environment of fixed temperature, the extracted work is bounded by the decrease of the free energy of the system.…
Thermal emission is the radiation of electromagnetic waves from hot objects. The promise of thermal-emission engineering for applications in energy harvesting, radiative cooling, and thermal camouflage has recently led to renewed research…
The problem of unstable particle decay is discussed to show how elementarity of a subsystem immersed in an infinitely larger environment is lost. The decay law, when the same kind of particles as decay product make up a thermal medium, is…
Any quantum operation applied on a physical system is performed as a unitary transformation on a larger extended system. If the extension used is a heat bath in thermal equilibrium, the concomitant change in the state of the bath…
According to conventional wisdom, a system placed in an environment with a different temperature tends to relax to the temperature of the latter, mediated by the flows of heat and/or matter that are set solely by the temperature difference.…
A natural connection between rational functions of several real or complex variables, and subspace collections is explored. A new class of function, superfunctions, are introduced which are the counterpart to functions at the level of…
We discuss a simple toy model which allows, in a natural way, for deriving central facts from thermodynamics such as its fundamental laws, including Carnot's version of the second principle. Our viewpoint represents thermodynamic systems as…