相关论文: Minimal work principle: proof and counterexamples

The validity of the Second Law of thermodynamics, indisputable in the macroscopic world, is challenged at the mesoscopic level: a mesoscopic isolated system, possessing spatial dimensions of the order of a few microns, is capable, as shown…

The minimal-coupling quantum heat engine is a thermal machine consisting of an explicit energy storage system, heat baths, and a working body, which alternatively couples to subsystems through discrete strokes -- energy-conserving two-body…

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…

Quantum thermodynamics aims at investigating both the emergence and the limits of the laws of thermodynamics from a quantum mechanical microscopic approach. In this scenario, thermodynamic processes with no heat exchange, namely, adiabatic…

To reconstruct thermodynamics based on the microscopic laws is one of the most important unfulfilled goals of statistical physics. Here, we show that the first law and the second law for adiabatic processes are derived from an assumption…

Unconventional cycles provide a useful didactic resource to discuss the second law of thermodynamics applied to thermal motors and their efficiency. In most cases they involve a negative slope, linear process that presents an adiabatic…

The task of finding optimal protocols that minimize the energetic cost of thermodynamic processes of long yet finite duration $\tau$ is a pressing one. We approach this problem here in a rigorous and systematic fashion by means of the…

Using the quasi-equilibrium Helmholtz energy (qHE), defined as the thermodynamic work in a quasi-static process, we investigate the thermal properties of both an isothermal process and a transition process between the adiabatic and…

A shortcut to adiabaticity is a finite-time process that produces the same final state as would result from infinitely slow driving. We show that such shortcuts can be found for weak perturbations from linear response theory. With the help…

The zeroth principle of thermodynamics in the form "temperature is uniform at equilibrium" is notoriously violated in relativistic gravity. Temperature uniformity is often derived from the maximization of the total number of microstates of…

After the justification of the maximum entropy approach for equilibrium thermodynamic system, and of a maximum path entropy algorithm for nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems by virtue of the principle of virtual work, we present in this…

We discuss the conditions for which the non-equilibrium work relation is valid by means of thermodynamic and microscopic arguments.

For an overdamped colloidal particle diffusing in a fluid in a controllable, virtual potential, we show that arbitrarily slow transformations, produced by smooth deformations of a double-well potential, need not be reversible. The…

It has recently been shown that small quantum subsystems generically equilibrate, in the sense that they spend most of the time close to a fixed equilibrium state. This relies on just two assumptions: that the state is spread over many…

We propose a new form of the Second Law inequality that defines a tight bound for extractable work from the non-equilibrium quantum state. In classical thermodynamics, the optimal work is given by the difference of free energy, what…

The minimum entropy production principle provides an approximative variational characterization of close-to-equilibrium stationary states, both for macroscopic systems and for stochastic models. Analyzing the fluctuations of the empirical…

Thermodynamics teaches that if a system initially off-equilibrium is coupled to work sources, the maximum work that it may yield is governed by its energy and entropy. For finite systems this bound is usually not reachable. The maximum…

Irreversible information processing cannot be carried out without some inevitable thermodynamical work cost. This fundamental restriction, known as Landauer's principle, is increasingly relevant today, as the energy dissipation of computing…

The quantum adiabatic theorem states that if a quantum system starts in an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian, and this Hamiltonian varies sufficiently slowly, the system stays in this eigenstate. We investigate experimentally the conditions…

We formulate a thermodynamic theory applicable to both classical and quantum systems. These systems are depicted as thermodynamic system-bath models capable of handling isothermal, isentropic, thermostatic, and entropic processes. Our…