English

Entropy production as change in observational entropy

Statistical Mechanics 2020-08-28 v2 Quantum Physics

Abstract

The second law of nonequilibrium thermodynamics within the open system paradigm (a small system coupled to one or multiple baths) is derived. This is done by showing positivity of entropy production for arbitrary Hamiltonian dynamics for a large class of initial states. Using the recently introduced notion of observational entropy, shortcomings of previous approaches are overcome. I apologize that the actual abstract of the manuscript is longer than the arXiv guidelines allow and therefore not displayed here.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1906.09933,
  title  = {Entropy production as change in observational entropy},
  author = {Philipp Strasberg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1906.09933},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

This paper has been split into two, which contain much additional information: arXiv:2002.08817 (general part) and arXiv:2008.02184 (application to master equation dynamics)

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:01:54.045Z