Related papers: Quantum measurement of work in mesoscopic systems
Underlying the classical thermodynamic principles are analogous microscopic laws, arising from the fundamental axioms of quantum mechanics. These define quantum thermodynamic variables such as quantum work and heat and characterize the…
Quantum measurements of physical quantities are usually described as ideal measurements. However, only a few measurements fulfil the conditions of ideal measurements. The aim of the present work is to describe real position measurements…
The concept of work is studied in quantum thermostatistics of a system surrounded by an environment and driven by an external force. It is found that there emerges the gauge theoretical structure in a nonequilibrium process, the field of…
In this contribution I review rigorous formulations of a variety of limitations of measurability in quantum mechanics. To this end I begin with a brief presentation of the conceptual tools of modern measurement theory. I will make precise…
Heat flow between a large ``bath'' and a smaller system brings them progressively closer to thermal equilibrium while increasing their entropy. Deviations from this trend are fluctuations involving a small fraction of a statistical ensemble…
What is the observer's role in quantum measurement? Obviously, observers prepare the apparatus, observe and interpret the measured results. Although the observer will have a certain influence on the measurement results by setting up the…
In quantum mechanics, measurements are dynamical processes and thus they should be capable of inducing currents. The symmetries of the Hamiltonian and measurement operator provide an organizing principle for understanding the conditions for…
Measuring a quantum system can randomly perturb its state. The strength and nature of this back-action depends on the quantity which is measured. In a partial measurement performed by an ideal apparatus, quantum physics predicts that the…
The measurement postulate of quantum theory stands in conflict with the laws of thermodynamics and has evoked debate regarding what actually constitutes a measurement. With the help of modern quantum statistical mechanics, we take the first…
We consider a thermodynamic machine in which the working fluid is a quantized harmonic oscillator that is controlled on timescales that are much faster than the oscillator period. We find that operation in this `fast' regime allows access…
After a brief historical perspective, we introduce the key notions of work and heat for quantum systems, to then apply them to quantum engines operating on quantum Otto and Carnot cycles. The irreversible and dissipative character of the…
Recent experimental results point to the existence of coherent quantum phenomena in systems made of a large number of particles, despite the fact that for many-body systems the presence of decoherence is hardly negligible and emerging…
Conversion of chemical energy into mechanical work is the fundamental mechanism of several natural phenomena at the nanoscale, like molecular machines and Brownian motors. Quantum mechanical effects are relevant for optimising these…
This article presents recent progress in the theory of quantum measurement engines and discusses the implications of them for quantum interpretations and philosophical implications of the theory. Several new measurement engine designs are…
We provide a reinterpretation of the quantum vacuum ambiguities that one encounters when studying particle creation phenomena due to an external and time-dependent agent. We propose a measurement-motivated understanding: Each way of…
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…
The concept of an embodied intelligent agent is a key concept in modern artificial intelligence and robotics. Physically, an agent is an open system embedded in an environment that it interacts with through sensors and actuators. It…
By computing the local energy expectation values with respect to some local measurement basis we show that for any quantum system there are two fundamentally different contributions: changes in energy that do not alter the local von Neumann…
Traditional quantum thermodynamic frameworks associate work to energy exchanges induced by unitary transformations generated by external controls, and heat to energy exchanges induced by bath interaction. Recently, a framework was…
Close to equilibrium, the exchange of particles and heat between macroscopic systems at different temperatures and different chemical potentials is known to be governed by a matrix of transport coefficients which is positive and symmetric.…