Related papers: The Second Law of Steady State Thermodynamics for …
The purpose of this work is to discuss recent progress in deriving the fundamental laws of thermodynamics (0th, 1st and 2nd-law) from nonequilibrium quantum statistical mechanics. Basic thermodynamic notions are clarified and different…
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…
We show that systems driven by an external force and described by Nose-Hoover dynamics allow for a consistent nonequilibrium thermodynamics description when the thermostatted variable is initially assumed in a state of canonical…
Equilibrium thermodynamics is combined with Jarzynski's irreversible work theorem to quantify the excess entropy produced by irreversible processes. The resulting rectified form of the second law parallels the first law, in the sense that…
The Kullback-Leibler inequality is a way of comparing any two density matrices. A technique to set up the density matrix for a physical system is to use the maximum entropy principle, given the entropy as a functional of the density matrix,…
Twentyseven comments (.) on the Second Law and nonequilibrium systems
The validity of the Second Law of thermodynamics, indisputable in the macroscopic world, is challenged at the mesoscopic level: a mesoscopic isolated system, possessing spatial dimensions of the order of a few microns, is capable, as shown…
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy production in macroscopic systems is non-negative, reaching zero only at thermodynamic equilibrium. As a corollary, this implies that the state trajectory of macroscopic systems is…
Assigning the variations of internal energy into heat or work contributions is a challenging task due to the fact that these properties are trajectory dependent. A number of proposals have been put forward for open quantum systems following…
Thermodynamics allows the application of Statistical Mechanics to finite and even small systems. As surface effects cannot be scaled away, one has to be careful with the standard arguments of splitting a system into two or bringing two…
Starting from microscopic mechanics, we derive thermodynamic relations for heat conducting nonequilibrium steady states. The extended Clausius relation enables one to experimentally determine nonequilibrium entropy to the second order in…
The result that closed systems evolve toward equilibrium is derived entirely on the basis of quantum field theory for a model system, without invoking any of the common extra-mathematical notions of particle trajectories, collapse of the…
The Kelvin-Planck statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a stricture on the nature of heat receipt by any body suffering a cyclic process. It makes no mention of temperature or of entropy. Beginning with a Kelvin-Planck statement…
We analyze the behavior of a network of quantum oscillators coupled with a number of external environments. We show that the dynamics is such that the quantum state of the network always obeys a local master equation with a simple…
Equilibrium statistics of Hamiltonian systems is correctly described by the microcanonical ensemble, whereas canonical ones fail in the most interesting, mostly inhomogeneous, situations like phase separations or away from the thermodynamic…
The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system can only increase over time. This appears to conflict with the reversible evolution of isolated quantum systems under the Schr\"odinger equation, which preserves…
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…
A review is given on the thermodynamical structure of bipartite entanglement. By comparing it to the axiomatic formulation of thermodynamics presented by Giles it is shown that for finite dimensional systems the two theories are formally…
Microcanonical Thermodynamics allows the application of Statistical Mechanics on one hand to closed finite and even small systems and on the other to the largest,self-gravitating ones. However, one has to reconsider the fundamental…
A general quantum theory encompassing Mechanics, Thermodynamics and irreversible dynamics is presented in two parts. The first part is concerned exclusively with the description of the states of any individual physical system. It is based…