Related papers: Thermodynamic properties of the quantum vacuum
We develop a non-conventional description of the vacuum energy in quantum field theory in terms of quantum entropy. Precisely, we show that the vacuum energy of any non-interacting quantum field at zero temperature is proportional to the…
We investigate the thermodynamical properties of quantum fields in curved spacetime. Our approach is to consider quantum fields in curved spacetime as a quantum system undergoing an out-of-equilibrium transformation. The non-equilibrium…
The theory of quantum thermodynamics investigates how the concepts of heat, work, and temperature can be carried over to the quantum realm, where fluctuations and randomness are fundamentally unavoidable. These lecture notes provide an…
Classical thermodynamics is unrivalled in its range of applications and relevance to everyday life. It enables a description of complex systems, made up of microscopic particles, in terms of a small number of macroscopic quantities, such as…
A fluctuation theorem for the nonequilibrium entropy production in quantum phase space is derived, which enables the consistent thermodynamic description of arbitrary quantum systems, open and closed. The new treatment naturally generalizes…
The vacuum of quantum fields contains correlated fluctuations. When restricted to one side of a surface these have a huge entropy of entanglement that scales with the surface area. If UV physics renders this entropy finite, then a…
Some interactions between classical or quantum fields and matter are known to be irreversible processes. Here we associate an entropy to the electromagnetic field from well-known notions of statistical quantum mechanics, in particular the…
Physicists have speculated about the properties of the quantum vacuum for at least 85 years; however, only recently have they understood the quantum vacuum sufficiently well to begin making testable predictions. Specifically, using…
We present and study a possible mechanism of extracting energies from the vacuum by external classical fields. Taking a constant magnetic field as an example, we discuss why and how the vacuum energy can be released in the context of…
Thermodynamics is based on a coarse-grained approach, from which its fundamental variables emerge, effectively erasing the complicate details of the microscopic dynamics within a macroscopic system. The strength of Thermodynamics lies in…
The proper definition of entropy is fundamental to the relationship between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. It also plays a major role in the recent debate about the validity of the concept of negative temperature. In this paper,…
The quantum thermodynamic property of the fractional damping system is investigated extensively. A fractional power-law decaying entropy function is revealed which presents another evidence for the validity of the third law of…
The theory of quantum thermodynamics investigates how the concepts of heat, work, and temperature can be carried over to the quantum realm, where fluctuations and randomness are fundamentally unavoidable. Of particular practical relevance…
Building on parallels between geometric quantum mechanics and classical mechanics, we explore an alternative basis for quantum thermodynamics that exploits the differential geometry of the underlying state space. We develop both…
A microscopic understanding of the thermodynamic entropy in quantum systems has been a mystery ever since the invention of quantum mechanics. In classical physics, this entropy is believed to be the logarithm of the volume of phase space…
This paper deals with the thermodynamic properties of a phantom field in a flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe. General expressions for the temperature and entropy of a general dark-energy field with equation of state $p=\omega\rho$…
Thermodynamics is usually developed starting from entropy and the maximum entropy principle. We investigate here to what extent one can replace entropy with relative entropy which has several advantages, for example in the context of local…
The quantum potential is shown to result from the presence of a subtle thermal vacuum energy distributed across the whole domain of an experimental setup. Explicitly, its form is demonstrated to be exactly identical to the heat distribution…
Understanding the quantum nature of the gravitational field is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges in theoretical physics. Despite significant progress, a complete and consistent theory remains elusive. However, in the weak field…
Vacuum energy in quantum field theory, being the sum of zero-point energies of all field modes, is formally infinite but yet, after regularization or renormalization, can give rise to finite observable effects. One way of understanding how…