English
Related papers

Related papers: Quantum thermodynamics with uncertain equilibrium

200 papers

Results on heat current, entropy production rate and entanglement are reported for a quantum system coupled to two different temperature heat reservoirs. By applying a temperature gradient, different quantum states can be found with exactly…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2013-05-29 Luis Quiroga , Ferney J. Rodriguez , Maria E. Ramirez , Roberto Paris

Collision models provide a simple and versatile setting to capture the dynamics of open quantum systems. The standard approach to thermalisition in this setting involves an environment of independent and identically-prepared thermal qubits,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-02-10 Ronan McElvogue , Andrew K. Mitchell , Gabriel T. Landi , Steve Campbell

I consider the non-equilibrium DC transport of electrons through a quantum system with a thermoelectric response. This system may be any nanostructure or molecule modeled by the nonlinear scattering theory which includes Hartree-like…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2013-03-06 Robert S. Whitney

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…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-03-26 Gian Paolo Beretta

How should one define thermodynamic quantities (internal energy, work, heat, etc.) for quantum systems coupled to their environments strongly? We examine three (classically equivalent) definitions of a quantum system's internal energy under…

We investigate fundamental connections between thermodynamics and quantum information theory. First, we show that the operational framework of thermal operations is nonequivalent to the framework of Gibbs-preserving maps, and we comment on…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-07-13 Philippe Faist

We consider the generic model of a finite-size quantum electron system connected to two (temperature and particle) reservoirs. The quantum open system is driven out of equilibrium by the presence of both a temperature and a chemical…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2017-04-04 H. Ness

We show that frequent nondemolition measurements of a quantum system immersed in a thermal bath allow the extraction of work in a closed cycle from the system-bath interaction (correlation) energy, a hitherto unexploited work resource. It…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2013-08-19 David Gelbwaser-Klimovsky , Noam Erez , Robert Alicki , Gershon Kurizki

Work extraction in quantum finite systems is an important issue in quantum thermodynamics. The optimal work extracted is called ergotropy, and it is achieved by maximizing the average work extracted over all the unitary cycles. However, an…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-04-10 Gianluca Francica , Luca Dell'Anna

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…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-03-06 Kaito Watanabe , Ryuji Takagi

A system in thermal equilibrium with a bath will generally be in an athermal state, if the system-bath coupling is strong. In some cases, it will be possible to extract work from that athermal state, after disconnecting the system from the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-09-17 Karen V. Hovhannisyan , Felipe Barra , Alberto Imparato

The focus is on understanding the quantum thermodynamics of strongly coupled non-Markovian quantum systems. To this end, a non-trivial, non-Markovian model of a central spin surrounded by a spin bath is taken up, and its exact evolution is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-08-28 Devvrat Tiwari , Baibhab Bose , Subhashish Banerjee

We study the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of pure decoherence processes in open quantum systems coupled to a thermal reservoir. We review various definitions of central quantities, such as internal energy, work, heat and entropy…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-06-16 Irene Ada Picatoste , Alessandra Colla , Heinz-Peter Breuer

Bohr and Heisenberg suggested that the thermodynamical quantities of temperature and energy are complementary in the same way as position and momentum in quantum mechanics. Roughly speaking, their idea was that a definite temperature can be…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 J. Uffink , J. H. van Lith-van Dis

In this work, we put forward the theoretical foundation toward thermodynamics of quantum impurity systems measurable in experiments. The theoretical developments involve the identifications on two types of thermodynamic entanglement…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-06-24 Hong Gong , Yao Wang , Hou-Dao Zhang , Rui-Xue Xu , Xiao Zheng , YiJing Yan

An exact stochastic model for the thermalisation of quantum states is proposed. The model has various physically appealing properties. The dynamics are characterised by an underlying Schrodinger evolution, together with a nonlinear term…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-10-30 D. C. Brody , L. P. Hughston

The resource theory of quantum thermodynamics has been a very successful theory and has generated much follow-up work in the community. It requires energy-preserving unitary operations to be implemented over a system, bath, and catalyst as…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-03-13 Mischa P. Woods , Michał Horodecki

With the progress of nano-technology, thermodynamics also has to be scaled down, calling for specific protocols to extract and measure work. Usually, such protocols involve the action of an external, classical field (the battery) of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-08-09 Cyril Elouard , Maxime Richard , Alexia Auffèves

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…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-01-01 Marcin Łobejko , Paweł Mazurek , Michał Horodecki

The nonequilibrium thermodynamics feature of a Brownian motor is investigated by obtaining exact time-dependent solutions. This in turn enables us to investigate not only the long time property (steady-state) but also the short time the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-05-23 Mesfin Taye