Related papers: Proof of the Nernst heat theorem
Thermodynamics is the phenomenological theory of heat and work. Here we analyze to what extent quantum thermodynamic relations are immune to the underlying mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. As a main result, we show that the…
I consider the non-equilibrium DC transport of electrons through a quantum system with a thermoelectric response. This system may be any nanostructure or molecule modeled by the nonlinear scattering theory which includes Hartree-like…
Deriving the laws of thermodynamics from a microscopic picture is a central quest of statistical mechanics. This tutorial focuses on the derivation of the first and second law for closed and open quantum systems far from equilibrium, where…
This paper is the second part of a previous paper (Marquet, 2019) dealing with the need to define the entropy with an absolute way, by using the third law of thermodynamics. In this second part it is shown that there is a need and interest…
We describe recent progress towards deriving the Fundamental Laws of thermodynamics (the 0th, 1st and 2nd Law) from nonequilibrium quantum statistical mechanics in simple, yet physically relevant models. Along the way, we clarify some basic…
In the scientific and engineering literature, the second law of thermodynamics is expressed in terms of the behavior of entropy in reversible and irreversible processes. According to the prevailing statistical mechanics interpretation the…
This thesis investigates the connection between quantum theory, thermodynamics and information theory. Theories with structure similar to that of quantum theory are considered, mathematically described by the framework of "Generalized…
The Kelvin-Planck statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a stricture on the nature of heat receipt by any body suffering a cyclic process. It makes no mention of temperature or of entropy. Beginning with a Kelvin-Planck statement…
Second law of thermodynamics imposes that in any thermodynamic process the entropy production must be nonnegative. In continuum physics such a requirement is fulfilled by postulating the constitutive equations which represent the material…
Thermodynamics allows the application of Statistical Mechanics to finite and even small systems. As surface effects cannot be scaled away, one has to be careful with the standard arguments of splitting a system into two or bringing two…
Several models of quantum open systems are known at present to violate, according to principles of the standard quantum theory of open systems, the second law of thermodynamics. Here, a new and rather trivial model of another type is…
Materials that are constantly driven out of thermodynamic equilibrium, such as active and living systems, typically violate the Einstein relation. This may arise from active contributions to particle fluctuations which are unrelated to the…
The zeroth principle of thermodynamics in the form "temperature is uniform at equilibrium" is notoriously violated in relativistic gravity. Temperature uniformity is often derived from the maximization of the total number of microstates of…
A major part of the many thermally driven processes in our natural environment as well as in engineering solutions of Carnot-type machinery is based on the second law of thermodynamics (or principle of entropy increase). An interesting link…
We use rigorous non-equilibrium thermodynamic arguments to prove (i) the residual entropy of any system is bounded below by the experimentally (calorimetrically) determined absolute temperature entropy, which itself is bounded below by the…
The explanation of the apparent universality of thermodynamics points toward the extension of the usual conceptual background of the second law. Arguments are collected that a basic guiding idea of stability of thermodynamic equilibrium…
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…
The 2nd law of thermodynamics yields an irreversible increase in entropy until thermal equilibrium is achieved. This irreversible increase is often assumed to require large and complex systems to emerge from the reversible microscopic laws…
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…
We analyze some aspects of the third law of thermodynamics. We first review both the entropic version (N) and the unattainability version (U) and the relation occurring between them. Then, we heuristically interpret (N) as a continuity…