Related papers: No current without heat
Entropy production is a fundamental concept that plays a crucial role in the second law of thermodynamics and the measure of irreversibility. It imposes rigorous constraints on the kinds of transformations allowed in thermodynamic…
We consider a quantum spin system consisting of a finite subsystem connected to infinite reservoirs at different temperatures. In this setup we define nonequilibrium steady states and prove that the rate of entropy production in such states…
The selection of an equilibrium state by maximising the entropy of a system, subject to certain constraints, is often powerfully motivated as an exercise in logical inference, a procedure where conclusions are reached on the basis of…
A non-vanishing entropy production rate is a hallmark of non-equilibrium stationary states and is therefore at the heart of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. It is a manifestation of a steady circulation $J_{\rm inv}$ along the level sets of…
The problem of estimating entropy production from incomplete information in stochastic thermodynamics is essential for theory and experiments. Whereas a considerable amount of work has been done on this topic, arguably, most of it is…
We study the entropy production in a macroscopic nonequilibrium system that undergoes an order-disorder phase transition. Entropy production is a characteristic feature of nonequilibrium dynamics with broken detailed balance. It is found…
Microscopic physical laws are time-symmetric, hence, a priori there exists no preferential temporal direction. However, the second law of thermodynamics allows one to associate the "forward" temporal direction to a positive variation of the…
Do negative absolute temperatures matter physics and specifically Statistical Physics? We provide evidence that we can certainly answer positively to this vexata quaestio. The great majority of models investigated by statistical mechanics…
Recently a number of approaches has been developed to connect the microscopic dynamics of particle systems to the macroscopic properties of systems in nonequilibrium stationary states, via the theory of dynamical systems. This way a direct…
How is the irreversibility of a high-dimensional chaotic system controlled by the heterogeneity in the non-reciprocal interactions among its elements? In this paper, we address this question using a stochastic model of random recurrent…
A generalization of the Gibbs entropy postulate is proposed based on the BBGKY hierarchy as the nonequilibrium entropy for a system of N interacting particles. This entropy satisfies the basic principles of thermodynamics in the sense that…
We consider thermal relaxation process of a quantum system attached to a single or multiple reservoirs. Quantifying the degree of irreversibility by entropy production, we prove that the irreversibility of the thermal relaxation is…
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases (or does not change) by time in an isolated system. As microscopic physical laws are reversible, the origin of irreversibility is not straightforward. Although the outcome of a…
Entropy production is the crucial quantity characterizing irreversible phenomena and the second law of thermodynamics. Yet, a ubiquitous definition eludes consensus. Given that entropy production arises from incomplete access to…
Irreversibility is one of the most intriguing concepts in physics. While microscopic physical laws are perfectly reversible, macroscopic average behavior has a preferred direction of time. According to the second law of thermodynamics, this…
It is a central question in quantum thermodynamics to determine how irreversible is a process that transforms an initial state $\rho$ to a final state $\sigma$, and whether such irreversibility can be thought of as a useful resource. For…
We discuss entropy production in nonequilibrium steady states by focusing on paths obtained by sampling at regular (small) intervals, instead of sampling on each change of the system's state. This allows us to study directly entropy…
We consider a one-dimensional persisent random walk viewed as a deterministic process with a form of time reversal symmetry. Particle reservoirs placed at both ends of the system induce a density current which drives the system out of…
The thermodynamic uncertainty relation expresses a universal trade-off between precision and entropy production, which applies in its original formulation to current observables in steady-state systems. We generalize this relation to…
The second law of thermodynamics can be expressed in terms of entropy production, which can be used to quantify the degree of irreversibility of a process. In this Chapter, we consider the standard scenario of open quantum systems, where a…