Related papers: Gibbs state postulate from dynamical stability -- …
We provide a systematic framework for constructing generic models of nonequilibrium quantum dynamics with a target stationary (mixed) state. Our framework identifies (almost) all combinations of Hamiltonian and dissipative dynamics that…
Passive states, i.e., those states from which no work can be extracted via unitary operations, play an important role in the foundations and applications of quantum thermodynamics. They generalize the familiar Gibbs thermal states, which…
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 better grasp of the physical foundations of life is necessary before we can understand the processes occurring inside a living cell. In his physical theory of the cell, American physiologist Gilbert Ling introduced an important notion of…
For small thermodynamic systems in contact with a heat bath, we determine the free energy by imposing the following two conditions. First, the quasi-static work in any configuration change is equal to the free energy difference. Second, the…
There is no compelling reason imposing that the methods of statistical mechanics should be restricted to the dynamical systems which follow the usual Boltzmann-Gibbs prescriptions. More specifically, ubiquitous natural and artificial…
We investigate under which conditions a mixed state on a finite-dimensional multipartite quantum system may be the unique, globally stable fixed point of frustration-free semigroup dynamics subject to specified quasi-locality constraints.…
The relationship between the vanishing of the heat capacities as $T\to0^+$ and the thermal stability is examined. The heat capacities vanish as fast as or faster than $T$ as $T\to0^+$ for states at the phase space boundary ($T=0$) to…
Equilibrium is characterized by its fundamental properties such as the detailed balance, the fluctuation-dissipation relation, and no heat dissipation. Based on the stochastic thermodynamics, we show that these three properties are…
As no heat effect and mechanical work are observed, we have a simple experimental resolution of the Gibbs paradox: both the thermodynamic entropy of mixing and the Gibbs free energy change are zero during the formation of any ideal…
We treat the problem of the approach to thermal equilibrium by only resorting to quantum dynamics of an isolated macroscopic system. Inspired by the two important works in 2009 and in 1929, we have noted that a condition we call…
The relationships between reversible Carnot cycles, the absence of perpetual motion machines and the existence of a non-decreasing, globally unique entropy function forms the starting point of many textbook presentations of the foundations…
When two initially thermal many-body systems start interacting strongly, their transient states quickly become non-Gibbsian, even if the systems eventually equilibrate. To see beyond this apparent lack of structure during the transient…
Thermal behavior in subsystems of closed quantum systems is commonly attributed to dynamical chaos, quantum ergodicity, canonical typicality, or the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, suggesting a fundamentally statistical origin of…
The robustness of properties of a statistical physics model to slight perturbations in the exact local interactions of the model is a very relevant philosophical question, considering real-life measurements on which we base some models can…
In statistical mechanics the zeroth law of thermodynamics is taken as a postulate which, as its name indicates, logically precedes the first and second laws. Treating it as a postulate has consequences for how temperature is introduced into…
Concepts like `typicality' and the `eigenstate thermalization hypothesis' aim at explaining the apparent equilibration of quantum systems, possibly after a very long time. However, these concepts are not concerned with the specific way in…
We assume that markovian dynamics on a finite graph enjoys a gauge symmetry under local scalings of the probability density, derive the transformation law for the transition rates and interpret the thermodynamic force as a gauge potential.…
The generalized zeroth law of thermodynamics indicates that the physical temperature in nonextensive statistical mechanics is different from the inverse of the Lagrange multiplier, beta. This leads to modifications of some of thermodynamic…
This paper gives a concise, mathematically rigorous description of phenomenological equilibrium thermodynamics for single-phase systems in the absence of chemical reactions and external forces. The present approach is similar to that of…