Related papers: Emergence of a second law of thermodynamics in iso…
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 second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases (or does not change) by time in an isolated system. As microscopic physical laws are reversible, the origin of irreversibility is not straightforward. Although the outcome of a…
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…
Traditional form of the second law of thermodynamics is strongly restricted by three conditions: One is the initial joint state of the system and surroundings should be a product state, so that there exists no initial correlations. The…
The classical Second Law of Thermodynamics demands that an isolated system evolves with a non-diminishing entropy. This holds as well in quantum mechanics if the evolution of the energy-isolated system can be described by a unital quantum…
For a quantum state undergoing unitary Schr\"odinger time evolution, the von Neumann entropy is constant. Yet the second law of thermodynamics, and our experience, show that entropy increases with time. Ingarden introduced the quantum…
The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system is almost always increasing. We propose combinatorial formalizations of the second law and explore their conditions of possibilities.
We review our approach to the second law of thermodynamics, viewed as a theorem asserting the growth of the mean (Gibbs-von Neumann) entropy of quantum spin systems undergoing automorphic (unitary) adiabatic transformations. Non-automorphic…
We consider the statistical irreversibility and its compatibility with the reversible dynamics. The role played by the observation is analyzed in detail. It makes our previous proof for the second law of thermodynamics clearer. On this…
It exists a large class of systems for which the traditional notion of extensivity breaks down. From experimental examples we induce two general hypothesis concerning such systems. In the first the existence of an internal coordinate system…
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…
Why can the world resist the law of entropy increase and produce self-organizing structure? Does the entropy of an isolated system always only increase and never decrease? Can be thermodymamic degradation and self-organizing evolution…
Fluctuation theorems and the second law of thermodynamics are powerful relations constraining the behavior of out-of-equilibrium systems. While there exist generalizations of these relations to feedback controlled quantum systems, their…
It is proved here that, as a consequence of the unitary quantum evolution, the expectation value of a properly defined quantum entropy operator (as opposed to the non-evolving von Neumann entropy) can only increase during non adiabatic…
Recently, there has been a considerable progress on the issue of the thermodynamic second law, which is known as the law of entropy increase or irreversibility. In particular, a novel symmetry known as the Gallavotti-Cohen symmetry is found…
Based on quantum statistical mechanics and microscopic quantum dynamics, we prove Planck's and Kelvin's principles for macroscopic systems in a general and realistic setting. We consider a hybrid quantum system that consists of the…
We show that the conservation and the non-additivity of the information, together with the additivity of the entropy make the entropy increase in an isolated system. The collapse of the entangled quantum state offers an example of the…
We show that the collapse of the entangled quantum state makes the entropy increase in an isolated system. The second law of thermodynamics is thus proven in its most general form.
A microscopic definition of the thermodynamic entropy in an isolated quantum system must satisfy (i) additivity, (ii) extensivity and (iii) the second law of thermodynamics. We show that the diagonal entropy, which is the Shannon entropy in…
The essential postulates of classical thermodynamics are formulated, from which the second law is deduced as the principle of increase of entropy in irreversible adiabatic processes that take one equilibrium state to another. The entropy…