Related papers: Looking for Work in Quantum Thermodynamics
Quantum thermodynamics has emerged as a separate sub-discipline, revising the concepts and laws of thermodynamics, at the quantum scale. In particular, there has been a disruptive shift in the way thermometry, and thermometers are perceived…
Quantum theory famously entails the existence of incompatible measurements; pairs of observables which cannot be simultaneously measured to arbitrary precision. Incompatibility is widely regarded to be a uniquely quantum phenomenon, linked…
At the heart of quantum thermodynamics lies a fundamental question about what is genuine "quantum" in quantum heat engines and how to seek this quantumness, so that thermodynamical tasks could be performed more efficiently compared with…
Quantum mechanics marks a radical departure from the classical understanding of Nature, fostering an inherent randomness which forbids a deterministic description; yet the most fundamental departure arises from something different. As shown…
Accurately describing work extraction from a quantum system is a central objective for the extension of thermodynamics to individual quantum systems. The concepts of work and heat are surprisingly subtle when generalizations are made to…
In this work, we reveal a new type of impossibility discovered in our recent research which forbids comparing the closeness of multiple unknown quantum states with any non-trivial threshold in a perfect or an unambiguous way. This…
Work belongs to the most basic notions in thermodynamics but it is not well understood in quantum systems, especially in open quantum systems. By introducing a novel concept of work functional along individual Feynman path, we invent a new…
Free energy fixes the maximum work of a thermodynamic process once the state and Hamiltonian are specified. A work-extraction task asks a different question: how much average work can a single device realize across several preparations and…
Superposition is the core feature that sets quantum theory apart from classical physics. Here, we investigate whether sets of quantum measurements can be modelled by using only devices that are operationally classical, in the sense that…
Quantum measurement is universal for quantum computation. This universality allows alternative schemes to the traditional three-step organisation of quantum computation: initial state preparation, unitary transformation, measurement. In…
We argue that in contrast to the classical physics, the measurements in the quantum mechanics should provide simultaneous information about all relevant relative amplitudes (pure states and the transitions between them) and all relevant…
General relativity, despite its profound successes, fails as a complete theory due to presence of singularities. While it is widely believed that quantum gravity has the potential to be a complete theory, in which spacetime consistently…
In Crull (2015) it is argued that, in order to confront outstanding problems in cosmology and quantum gravity, interpretational aspects of quantum theory can by bypassed because decoherence is able to resolve them. As a result, Crull (2015)…
The new orthodoxy of quantum mechanics (QM) based on the decoherence approach requires many-worlds as an essential ingredient for logical consistency, and one may wonder what status to give to all these "other worlds". Here we advocate that…
Considering a general microscopic model for a quantum measuring apparatus comprising a quantum probe coupled to a thermal bath, we analyze the energetic resources necessary for the realization of a quantum measurement, which includes the…
A quantum engine fueled by quantum measurement is proposed. Under the finite-time adiabatic driving regime, the conversion of heat to work is realized without the compression and expansion of the resonance frequency. The work output,…
Attempts to understand zero temperature phase transitions have forced physicists to consider a regime where the standard paradigms of condensed matter physics break down [1-4]. These quantum critical systems lack a simple description in…
We employ the operational quasiprobability (OQ) as a work distribution, which reproduces the Jarzynski equality and yields the average work consistent with the classical definition. The OQ distribution can be experimentally implemented…
A new formulation of quantum mechanics is developed which does not require the concept of the wave-particle duality. Rather than assigning probabilities to outcomes, probabilities are instead assigned to entire fine-grained histories. The…
The recently established universal uncertainty principle revealed that two nowhere commuting observables can be measured simultaneously in some state, whereas they have no joint probability distribution in any state. Thus, one measuring…