Related papers: Reflections of Sadi Carnot
A cyclic thermodynamic heat engine runs most efficiently if it is reversible. Carnot constructed such a reversible heat engine by combining adiabatic and isothermal processes for a system containing an ideal gas. Here, we present an example…
Recently, a formal analogy between the fluctuating diffusivity and thermodynamics has been proposed based on phenomena of heterogeneous diffusion observed in living cells. This not only offers the analogs of the quantity of heat and work as…
A simple and effective approach to thermodynamics is suggested, which solves the major difficulties in the traditional presentation of the subject. The internal energy is introduced from the behavior of deformable bodies, whereas the…
We provide a characterization of energy in the form of exchanged heat and work between two interacting constituents of a closed, bipartite, correlated quantum system. By defining a binding energy we derive a consistent quantum formulation…
We define thermodynamic configurations and identify two primitives of discrete quantum processes between configurations for which heat and work can be defined in a natural way. This allows us to uncover a general second law for any discrete…
The theory of quantum thermodynamics investigates how the concepts of heat, work, and temperature can be carried over to the quantum realm, where fluctuations and randomness are fundamentally unavoidable. Of particular practical relevance…
It is shown that the structure of thermodynamics is "form invariant", when it is derived using maximum entropy principle for various choices of entropy and even beyond equilibrium. By the form invariance of thermodynamics, it is meant that…
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…
From the thermodynamic equilibrium properties of a two-level system with variable energy-level gap $\Delta$, and a careful distinction between the Gibbs relation $dE = T dS + (E/\Delta) d\Delta$ and the energy balance equation $dE = \delta…
Thermodynamics is a science concerning the state of a system, whether it is stable, metastable, or unstable. The combined law of thermodynamics derived by Gibbs about 150 years ago laid the foundation of thermodynamics. In Gibbs combined…
Thermodynamics is commonly presented as a theory of macroscopic systems in stable equilibrium, built upon assumptions of extensivity and scaling with system size. In this paper, we present a universal formulation of the elementary…
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…
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…
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…
Thermodynamics is traditionally concerned with systems comprised of a large number of particles. Here we present a framework for extending thermodynamics to individual quantum systems, including explicitly a thermal bath and work-storage…
At the dawn of thermodynamics, Carnot's constraint on efficiency of heat engines stimulated the formulation of one of the most universal physical principles, the second law of thermodynamics. In recent years, the field of heat engines…
We present a new outlook on the climate system thermodynamics, studying some of its macroscopic properties in terms of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. We review and clarify the notion of efficiency of the climate system by…
The interplay between quantum-mechanical properties, such as coherence, and classical notions, such as energy, is a subtle topic at the forefront of quantum thermodynamics. The traditional Carnot argument limits the conversion of heat to…
Carnot's four-part ideal-gas cycle includes both isothermal and adiabatic expansions and compressions. Analyzing this cycle provides the fundamental basis for statistical thermodynamics. We explore the cycle here from a pedagogical view in…
Heat is a physical manifestation of entropy, where the removal of entropy from a thermal energy reservoir permits the conversion of heat into work. This entropy transfer is facilitated by the cold thermal energy reservoir in typical heat…