相关论文: Correlating thermal machines and the second law at…

For macroscopic systems, the second law of thermodynamics establishes an inequality between the amount of work performed on a system in contact with a thermal reservoir, and the change in its free energy. For microscopic systems, this…

It is well-known in thermodynamics that the creation of correlations costs work. It seems then a truism that if a thermodynamic transformation A->B is impossible, so will be any transformation that in sending A to B also correlates among…

The laws of thermodynamics strongly restrict the performance of thermal machines. Standard thermodynamics, initially developed for uncorrelated macroscopic systems, does not hold for microscopic systems correlated with their environments.…

The possibility of a controlled manipulation with molecules at the nanoscale allows us to gain net work from thermal energy, although this seems to be in contradiction to the Second Law of thermodynamics. Any manipulation, however, causes…

How much work can be extracted from a heat bath using a thermal machine? The study of this question has a very long tradition in statistical physics in the weak-coupling limit, applied to macroscopic systems. However, the assumption that…

The relationship between thermodynamics and statistical physics is valid in the thermodynamic limit - when the number of particles becomes very large. Here, we study thermodynamics in the opposite regime - at both the nano scale, and when…

The second law of thermodynamics tells us which state transformations are so statistically unlikely that they are effectively forbidden. Its original formulation, due to Clausius, states that "Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer…

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…

Recent work using tools from quantum information theory has shown that at the nanoscale where quantum effects become prevalent, there is not one thermodynamical second law but many. Derivations of these laws assume that an experimenter has…

Almost all processes -- highly correlated, weakly correlated, or correlated not at all---exhibit statistical fluctuations. Often physical laws, such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, address only typical realizations -- as highlighted by…

In the classical regime, thermodynamic state transformations are governed by the free energy. This is also called as the second law of thermodynamics. Previous works showed that, access to a catalytic system allows us to restore the second…

Originally formulated for macroscopic machines, the laws of thermodynamics were recently shown to hold for quantum systems coupled to ideal sources of work (external classical fields) and heat (systems at equilibrium). Ongoing efforts have…

Thermodynamics is traditionally concerned with systems comprised of a large number of particles. Here we present a framework for extending thermodynamics to individual quantum systems, including explicitly a thermal bath and work-storage…

In recent years we have witnessed a concentrated effort to make sense of thermodynamics for small-scale systems. One of the main difficulties is to capture a suitable notion of work that models realistically the purpose of quantum machines,…

Many fruitful analogies have emerged between the theories of quantum entanglement and thermodynamics, motivating the pursuit of an axiomatic description of entanglement akin to the laws of thermodynamics. A long-standing open problem has…

Quantum thermodynamics investigates how robust the second law of thermodynamics serves as the unique fundamental law in the small quantum world. To tackle this problem, the quantum coherence constitutes a major difficulty of investigations,…

In the standard framework of thermodynamics the work produced or consumed in a process is a random variable whose average value is bounded by the change in the free energy of the system. This work is calculated without regard for the size…

A heat engine undergoes a cyclic operation while in equilibrium with the net result of conversion of heat into work. Quantum effects such as superposition of states can improve an engine's efficiency by breaking detailed balance, but this…

Based only on classical Hamiltonian dynamics, we prove the maximum work principle in a system where macroscopic dynamical degrees of freedom are intrinsically coupled to microscopic degrees of freedom. Unlike recent identities between…

We analyze an autonomous micro-engine as a closed quantum mechanical system, including the work it performs and the fuel it consumes. Our model system shows by example that it is possible to transfer energy steadily and spontaneously…