相关论文: The second law of thermodynamics from concave ener…

Quantum dynamics controlled by a time-dependent coupling constant are studied. It is proven that an energy eigenstate expectation value of work done by the system in a quench process cannot exceed the work in the corresponding quasi-static…

We treat a quantum mechanical system with certain general properties which are expected to be common in macroscopic quantum systems. Starting from a PURE initial state (which may not describe an equilibrium) in which energy is mildly…

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…

Events in mesoscopic systems often take place at first-passage times, as is for instance the case for a colloidal particle that escapes a metastable state. An interesting question is how much work an external agent has done on a particle…

In the classical limit no work is needed to couple a system to a bath with sufficiently weak coupling strength (or with arbitrarily finite coupling strength for a linear system) at the same temperature. In the quantum domain this may be…

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…

A major part of the many thermally driven processes in our natural environment as well as in engineering solutions of Carnot-type machinery is based on the second law of thermodynamics (or principle of entropy increase). An interesting link…

A scheme for treating the Second Law of thermodynamics as a constraint and accounting for the approximate nature of constitutive assumptions in continuum thermomechanics is discussed. An unconstrained, concave, variational principle is…

A classical and quantum mechanical generalized second law of thermodynamics in cosmology implies constraints on the effective equation of state of the universe in the form of energy conditions, obeyed by many known cosmological solutions,…

The second law of thermodynamics for adiabatic operations -- constraints on state transitions in closed systems under external control -- is one of the fundamental principles of thermodynamics. On the other hand, it is recently established…

The essential postulates of classical thermodynamics are formulated, from which the second law is deduced as the principle of increase of entropy in irreversible adiabatic processes that take one equilibrium state to another. The entropy…

How should one define thermodynamic quantities (internal energy, work, heat, etc.) for quantum systems coupled to their environments strongly? We examine three (classically equivalent) definitions of a quantum system's internal energy under…

The second law of thermodynamics is discussed and reformulated from a quantum information theoretic perspective for open quantum systems using relative entropy. Specifically, the relative entropy of a quantum state with respect to…

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…

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 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…

Statistical mechanics descriptions of the second law of thermodynamics generally imply point-like particles driven by a dissipative overall mechanism for their simultaneous time-evolution. As the number of involved particles grows larger,…

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…

We re-interprete the microcanonical conditions in the quantum domain as constraints for the interaction of the "gas-subsystem" under consideration and its environment ("container"). The time-average of a purity-measure is found to equal the…