Related papers: Feeding upon negative entropy in a thermal-equilib…

It is shown that one of consequences of basic principle of quantum mechanics at the mesoscopic level is violation of the second law of thermodynamics and that an experimental evidence of this violation was obtained long ago.

We initially prepare a quantum linear oscillator weakly coupled to a bath in equilibrium at an arbitrary temperature. We disturb this system by varying a Hamiltonian parameter of the coupled oscillator, namely, either its spring constant or…

Thermodynamic entropy is determined by a heat measurement through the Clausius equality. The entropy then formalizes a fundamental limitation of operations by the second law of thermodynamics. The entropy is also expressed as the Shannon…

A version of the second law of thermodynamics states that one cannot lower the energy of an isolated system by a cyclic operation. We prove this law without introducing statistical ensembles and by resorting only to quantum mechanics. We…

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 seek here to unify the second law of thermodynamics with the other laws, or at least to put up a law behind the second law of thermodynamics. Assuming no fine tuning, concretely by a random Hamiltonian, we argue just from equations of…

I use cosmology examples to illustrate that the second law of thermodynamics is not old and tired, but alive and kicking, continuing to stimulate interesting research on really big puzzles. The question "Why is the entropy so low?" (despite…

In this paper we discuss the laws of thermodynamics for interacting tachyonic scalar field. The components of the tachyonic scalar field in the universe are taken to exist in the state of non-equilibrium initially, but due to interaction…

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 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…

Firstly, we calculate quantitatively decrease of entropy by the known formulas in the ordering phenomena and nucleation of thermodynamics of microstructure. They show again that a necessary condition of decrease of entropy in isolated…

At very small scales, thermodynamic energy exchanges like work and heat become comparable to thermal energy of the system, which leads to unusual phenomena like the transient violations of Second Law. We explore the generic characters of…

Materials that are constantly driven out of thermodynamic equilibrium, such as active and living systems, typically violate the Einstein relation. This may arise from active contributions to particle fluctuations which are unrelated to the…

A pair of symmetric expressions for the second law of thermodynamics is put forward. The conservation and transfer of entropy is discussed and applied to problems like biology, culture and life itself. A new explanation is given to the…

The second law of ordinary thermodynamics and the second law of steady state thermodynamics, as proposed by Oono and Paniconi, are investigated from the microscopic point of view for the open quantum system. Based on the H-theorem of…

We consider a single harmonic oscillator coupled to a bath at zero temperature. As is well known, the oscillator then has a higher average energy than that given by its ground state. Here we show analytically that for a damping model with…

We investigate the unified first law and the generalized second law in a modified holographic dark energy model. The thermodynamical analysis on the apparent horizon can work and the corresponding entropy formula is extracted from the…

We introduce axiomatically a complete thermodynamic formalism for a single macromolecule, either with or without detailed balance, in an isothermal ambient fluid based on its stochastic dynamics. With detailed balance, the novel theory…

We consider the Non-Equilibrium Steady State induced by two infinite quantum thermal reservoirs at different temperatures and derive an inequality giving the upper bound of the work extracted by cyclic operations. This upper bound tends to…

Life is a planetary feature that depends on its environment, but it has also strongly shaped the physical conditions on Earth, having created conditions highly suitable for a productive biosphere. Clearly, the second law of thermodynamics…