Related papers: A quantum violation of the second law?
Small systems in contact with a heat bath evolve by stochastic dynamics. Here we show that, when one such small system is weakly coupled to another one, it is possible to infer the presence of such weak coupling by observing the violation…
Macroscopic cyclic heat engines have been a major motivation for the emergence of thermodynamics. In the last decade, cyclic heat engines that have large fluctuations and operate at finite time were studied within the more modern framework…
All physical theories should obey the second law of thermodynamics. However, existing proposals to describe the dynamics of hybrid classical-quantum systems either violate the second law or lack a proof of its existence. Here we rectify…
The principle of microscopic reversibility lies at the core of fluctuation theorems, which have extended our understanding of the second law of thermodynamics to the statistical level. In the quantum regime, however, this elementary…
We study two small quantum systems coupled to the same reservoir which is in thermal equilibrium. By studying the particle density and the energy density in the two systems before and after they contact each other, we find that the two…
The formulation of the First and Second Principles of thermodynamics for a particle in contact with a heat bath and submitted to an external force is analyzed, by means of the Boltzmann-Lorentz kinetic equation. The possible definitions of…
We consider a theory of quantum thermodynamics with multiple conserved quantities (or charges). To this end, we generalize the seminal results of Sparaciari et al. [PRA 96:052112, 2017] to the case of multiple, in general non-commuting…
In this report I discuss fluctuation theorems and transient violations of the second law of thermodynamics in small systems. Special emphasis is placed on free-energy recovery methods in the framework of non-equilibrium single-molecule…
We derive conditions for rotating particle detectors to respond in a variety of bounded spacetimes and compare the results with the folklore that particle detectors do not respond in the vacuum state appropriate to their motion.…
The 2nd law of thermodynamics yields an irreversible increase in entropy until thermal equilibrium is achieved. This irreversible increase is often assumed to require large and complex systems to emerge from the reversible microscopic laws…
For a two-level quantum mechanical system, we derive microscopically the exact expression for the fluctuation of microscopic work in a multi-step non-equilibrium process, and we rigorously prove that in an isothermal process, the…
A generalized version of the Maximum Work Theorem is valid when the system is initially not at thermal equilibrium. In this work, we initially study the fraction of trajectories that violate this generalized theorem for a two simple…
In one of its versions, the Second Law states: "It is impossible to construct an engine which will work in a complete cycle, and produces no effect except the raising of a weight and cooling of a heat reservoir." While the Second Law is…
In quantum systems which satisfy the hypothesis of equal weights for eigenstates [4], the maximum work principle (for extremely slow and relatively fast operation) is derived by using quantum dynamics alone. This may be a crucial step in…
We show that systems with negative specific heat can violate the zeroth law of thermodynamics. By both numerical simulations and by using exact expressions for free energy and microcanonical entropy it is shown that if two systems with the…
Small systems (of interest in the areas of nanophysics, quantum information, etc.) are particularly vulnerable to environmental effects. Thus, we determine various thermodynamic functions for an oscillator in an arbitrary heat bath at…
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…
Characterizing fluctuations of work in coherent quantum systems is notoriously problematic. Here we reveal the ultimate source of the problem by proving that ($\mathfrak{A}$) energy conservation and ($\mathfrak{B}$) the Jarzynski…
In the scientific and engineering literature, the second law of thermodynamics is expressed in terms of the behavior of entropy in reversible and irreversible processes. According to the prevailing statistical mechanics interpretation the…
We investigate the validity of the generalized second law of thermodynamics, in the cosmological scenario where dark energy interacts with both dark matter and radiation. Calculating separately the entropy variation for each fluid component…