Related papers: On Page's examples challenging the entropy bound
This article is the first in a series dealing with the thermodynamic properties of quantum Coulomb systems. In this first part, we consider a general real-valued function $E$ defined on all bounded open sets of $\R^3$. Our aim is to give…
Skeptics of biological evolution often claim that evolution requires a decrease in entropy, giving rise to a conflict with the second law of thermodynamics. This argument is fallacious because it neglects the large increase in entropy…
We prove a generalized version of the RAGE theorem for N-body quantum systems. The result states that only bound states of systems with $0\leq n\leq N$ particles persist in the long time average. The limit is formulated by means of an…
Elementary particles of large spin $s$ store quantum information in degenerate states and therefore are subject to the Bekenstein entropy bound. We observe that for sufficiently large $s$ the bound is violated unless the particle acquires a…
We argue that the entanglement entropy for a very small subsystem obeys a property which is analogous to the first law of thermodynamics when we excite the system. In relativistic setups, its effective temperature is proportional to the…
We propose an approach to the realization of many-body quantum state distributions inspired by combined principles of thermodynamics and mesoscopic physics. Its essence is a maximum entropy principle conditioned by conservation laws. We go…
In a closed system, the total number of particles is fixed. We ask how much does this conservation law restrict the amount of entanglement that can be created. We derive a tight upper bound on the bipartite entanglement entropy in closed…
The universal validity of the second law of thermodynamics is widely attributed to a finely tuned initial condition of the universe. This creates a problem: why is the universe atypical? We suggest that the problem is an artefact created by…
Building upon work by Matsumoto, we show that the quantum relative entropy with full-rank second argument is determined by four simple axioms: i) Continuity in the first argument, ii) the validity of the data-processing inequality, iii)…
The entropy production rate is a key quantity in non-equilibrium thermodynamics of both classical and quantum processes. No universal theory of entropy production is available to date, which hinders progress towards its full grasping. By…
This paper argues that the physics of condensed matter cannot be fully reduced to the supposedly fundamental quantum mechanical theory for all the atoms of which the system consists. In fact, there are many reasons to reject the idea that…
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…
In quantum theory it is generally assumed that there exists a special state called the vacuum state and that this state is a lower bound to the energy. However it has recently been demonstrated that this is not necessarily the case for some…
Many biological systems perform close to their physical limits, but promoting this optimality to a general principle seems to require implausibly fine tuning of parameters. Using examples from a wide range of systems, we show that this…
Quantum fields are known to violate all the pointwise energy conditions of classical general relativity. We review the subject of quantum energy inequalities: lower bounds satisfied by weighted averages of the stress-energy tensor, which…
We address in this work the problem of minimizing quantum entropies under local constraints. We suppose macroscopic quantities such as the particle density, current, and kinetic energy are fixed at each point of $\Rm^d$, and look for a…
The limit of small entropy production is reached in relaxing systems long after preparation, and in stationary driven systems in the limit of small driving power. Surprisingly, for extended systems this limit is not in general the…
The second law of thermodynamics places a limitation into which states a system can evolve into. For systems in contact with a heat bath, it can be combined with the law of energy conservation, and it says that a system can only evolve into…
Living systems maintain or increase local order by working against the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Thermodynamic consistency is restored as they dissipate heat, thereby increasing the net entropy of their environment. Recently introduced…
In a gedanken experiment in which a box initially containing energy $E$ and entropy $S$ is lowered toward a black hole and then dropped in, it was shown by Unruh and Wald that the generalized second law of black hole thermodynamics holds,…