Related papers: Quantum work beyond classical (commuting) limits
Constraints on work extraction are fundamental to our operational understanding of the thermodynamics of both classical and quantum systems. In the quantum setting, finite-time control operations typically generate coherence in the…
Thermodynamics teaches that if a system initially off-equilibrium is coupled to work sources, the maximum work that it may yield is governed by its energy and entropy. For finite systems this bound is usually not reachable. The maximum…
The universal quantum work relation connects a functional of an arbitrary observable averaged over the forward process to the free energy difference and another functional averaged over the time-reversed process. Here, we ask the question…
We consider the task of extracting work from quantum systems in the resource theory perspective of thermodynamics, where free states are arbitrary thermal states, and allowed operations are energy conserving unitary transformations. Taking…
The separation of internal energy into heat and work in quantum thermodynamics is a controversial issue for a long time, and we revisit and solve this problem in this work. It is shown that the Hamiltonian plays dual roles for a quantum…
Extracting useful work from quantum systems is a fundamental problem in quantum thermodynamics. In scenarios where rapid protocols are desired -- whether due to practical constraints or deliberate design choices -- a fundamental trade-off…
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…
A key concept in quantum thermodynamics is extractable work, which specifies the maximum amount of work that can be extracted from a quantum system. Different quantities are used to measure extractable work, the most prevalent of which are…
The quantum ergotropy quantifies the maximal amount of work that can be extracted from a quantum state without changing its entropy. Given that the ergotropy can be expressed as the difference of quantum and classical relative entropies of…
Work extraction from a heat engine in a cycle by a quantum mechanical device (quantum "piston") is analyzed. The standard definition of work fails in the quantum domain. The correct extractable work and its efficiency bound are shown to…
Quantum work is usually determined from two projective measurements of the energy at the beginning and at the end of a thermodynamic process. However, this paradigm cannot be considered thermodynamically consistent as it does not account…
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…
We introduce the resource-theoretic free energy of a quantum channel as the maximal work extractable from the channel as its output equilibrates to a thermal state and its reference system remains locally intact. It is proportional to the…
Quantum thermodynamics allows for the interconversion of quantum coherence and mechanical work. Quantum coherence is thus a potential physical resource for quantum machines. However, formulating a general nonequilibrium thermodynamics of…
We present a unified and simple method for deriving work theorems for classical and quantum Hamiltonian systems, both under equilibrium conditions and in a steady state. Throughout the paper, we adopt the partitioning of the total…
The resource-theoretic approach to quantum thermodynamics assumes complete knowledge of the thermal equilibrium against which thermodynamic resources are defined. In practice, however, this state is determined by the system Hamiltonian and…
We have derived several relations, which allow the evaluation of the system free energy changes in the leading order in $\hbar^{2}$ along classically generated trajectories. The results are formulated in terms of purely classical…
We study the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of a single particle with two available energy levels, in contact with a classical (Maxwell-Boltzmann) or quantum (Bose-Einstein) heat bath. The particle can undergo transitions between the levels…
A genuine feature of projective quantum measurements is that they inevitably alter the mean energy of the observed system if the measured quantity does not commute with the Hamiltonian. Compared to the classical case, Jacobs proved that…
Quantifying the ergotropy (a.k.a. available energy), namely the maximal amount of energy that can be extracted from a thermally isolated system, is a central problem in quantum thermodynamics. Notably, the same problem has been long studied…