Related papers: Maximal work extraction from quantum systems
Work extraction is one of the most central processes in quantum thermodynamics. However, the prior analysis of optimal extractable work has been restricted to a limited operational scenario where complete information about the initial state…
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…
In thermodynamics, entropy production and work quantify irreversibility and the consumption of useful energy, respectively, when a system is driven out of equilibrium. For quantum systems, these quantities can be identified at the…
Dissipative quantum systems are frequently described within the framework of the so-called "system-plus-reservoir" approach. In this work we assign their description to the Maximum Entropy Formalism and compare the resulting thermodynamic…
We consider the efficiency of chemical energy extraction from the environment by the growth of a copolymer made of two constituent units in the entropy-driven regime. We show that the thermodynamic nonlinearity associated with the…
Many physical, biological, and even social systems are faced with the problem of how to efficiently harvest free energy from an environment that can have many possible states, yet only have a limited number of harvesting protocols to choose…
The universal bound on specific entropy was originally inferred from black hole thermodynamics. We here show from classical thermodynamics alone that for a system at fixed volume or fixed pressure, the ratio of entropy to nonrelativistic…
Reversible work extraction from identical quantum systems via collective operations was shown to be possible even without producing entanglement among the sub-parts. Here, we show that implementing such global operations necessarily imply…
Traditional quantum thermodynamic frameworks associate work to energy exchanges induced by unitary transformations generated by external controls, and heat to energy exchanges induced by bath interaction. Recently, a framework was…
One of the fundamental questions in quantum thermodynamics concerns the decomposition of energetic changes into heat and work. Contrary to classical engines, the entropy change of the piston cannot be neglected in the quantum domain. As a…
In this paper I apply newly-proposed information-theoretic principles to thermodynamic work extraction. I show that if it is possible to extract work deterministically from a physical system prepared in any one of a set of states, then…
We investigate the problem of finding the local analogue of the ergotropy, that is the maximum work that can be extracted from a system if we can only apply local unitary transformation acting on a given subsystem. In particular, we provide…
Quantum thermodynamics studies how quantum systems and operations may be exploited as sources of work to perform useful thermodynamic tasks. In real-world conditions, the evolution of open quantum systems typically displays memory effects,…
Operational quantum stochastic thermodynamics is a recently proposed theory to study the thermodynamics of open systems based on the rigorous notion of a quantum stochastic process or quantum causal model. In there, a stochastic trajectory…
We study the energy extraction from and charging to a finite-dimensional quantum system by general quantum operations. We prove that the changes in energy induced by unital quantum operations are limited by the ergotropy/charging bound for…
Given the evolution of an arbitrary open quantum system, we formulate a general and unambiguous method to separate the internal energy change of the system into an entropy-related contribution and a part causing no entropy change,…
We consider a class of quantum heat engines consisting of two subsystems interacting via a unitary transformation and coupled to two separate baths at different temperatures $T_h > T_c$. The purpose of the engine is to extract work due to…
Work can be extracted from a single heat bath if additional information is available. For the paradigmatic case of a Brownian particle in a harmonic potential, whose position has been measured with finite precision, we determine the optimal…
We revisit the classic thermodynamic problem of maximum work extraction from two arbitrary sized hot and cold reservoirs, modelled as perfect gases. Assuming ignorance about the extent to which the process has advanced, which implies an…
Several prior attempts to formulate the Laws of Thermodynamics for a small region within a larger quantum system have led to inconsistencies and unexplained infinities. The entropy and external work, in particular, require careful analysis…