Related papers: The concept of minimal dissipation and the identif…
A definition of quantum mechanical work is introduced in this dissertation, preserving the mathematical structure of the Classical Mechanics concept of work without, however, in any way invoking the notion of trajectory. By use of Gaussian…
The statistical mechanical description of small systems staying in thermal equilibrium with an environment can be achieved by means of the Hamiltonian of mean force. In contrast to the reduced density matrix of an open quantum system, or…
The theory of open quantum systems plays a fundamental role in several scientific and technological disciplines, from quantum computing and information science to molecular electronics and quantum thermodynamics. Despite its widespread…
One approach to monitoring a dynamic system relies on decomposition of the system into weakly interacting subsystems. An earlier paper introduced a notion of weak interaction called separability, and showed that it leads to exact…
We discuss an approach to determine averages of the work, dissipated heat and variation of internal energy of an open quantum system driven by an external classical field. These quantities are measured by coupling the quantum system to a…
We apply the quantum jump approach to address the statistics of work in a driven two-level system coupled to a heat bath. We demonstrate how this question can be analyzed by counting photons absorbed and emitted by the environment in…
We introduce a framework for implementing quantum operations as steady states of a subsystem in an extended Hilbert space. Each operation has a spectral criterion for reaching the steady state. This adds a `spectral switch' mechanism to the…
The minimal-coupling quantum heat engine is a thermal machine consisting of an explicit energy storage system, heat baths, and a working body, which alternatively couples to subsystems through discrete strokes -- energy-conserving two-body…
Evaluating the maximum amount of work extractable from a nanoscale quantum system is one of the central problems in quantum thermodynamics. Previous works identified the free energy of the input state as the optimal rate of extractable work…
Standard treatments of quantum work using projective energy measurements erase initial coherence and alter the dynamics, thereby failing to capture the thermodynamic effects of coherent superpositions of energy eigenstates in an ensemble of…
The standard theoretical descriptions of the dynamics of open quantum systems rely on the assumption that the correlations with the environment can be neglected at some reference (initial) time. While being reasonable in specific instances,…
We present a reduced density operator for electronically open molecules by explicitly averaging over the environmental degrees of freedom of the composite Hamiltonian. Specifically, we include the particle-number non-conserving…
Thermodynamics teaches that if a system initially off-equilibrium is coupled to work sources, the maximum work that it may yield is governed by its energy and entropy. For finite systems this bound is usually not reachable. The maximum…
We treat a quantum mechanical system with certain general properties which are expected to be common in macroscopic quantum systems. Starting from a PURE initial state (which may not describe an equilibrium) in which energy is mildly…
Of indisputable relevance for non-equilibrium thermodynamics, fluctuations theorems have been generalized to the framework of quantum thermodynamics, with the notion of work playing a key role in such contexts. The typical approach consists…
How to rigorously define thermodynamic quantities such as heat, work, and internal energy in open quantum systems driven far from equilibrium remains a significant open question in quantum thermodynamics. Heat is a quantity whose…
Although nonequilibrium work and fluctuation relations have been studied in detail within classical statistical physics, extending these results to open quantum systems has proven to be conceptually difficult. For systems that undergo…
We review recent progress in optimal control in stochastic thermodynamics. Theoretical advances provide in-depth insight into minimum-dissipation control with either full or limited (parametric) control, and spanning the limits from slow to…
A calorimetric measurement has recently been proposed as a promising technique to measure thermodynamic quantities in a dissipative superconducting qubit. These measurements rely on the fact that the system is projected into energy…
A pair of systems at different temperatures is a classic environment for a heat engine, which produces work during the relaxation to a common equilibrium. It is generally believed that a direct interaction between the two systems will…