相关论文: Thermodynamic Limit and Decoherence: Rigorous Resu…
The Schrodinger equation for a macroscopic number of particles is linear in the wave function, deterministic, and invariant under time reversal. In contrast, the concepts used and calculations done in statistical physics and condensed…
With a choice of boundary conditions for solutions of the Schr\"odinger equation, state vectors and density operators even for closed systems evolve asymmetrically in time. For open systems, standard quantum mechanics consequently predicts…
We show that when the thermal wavelength is comparable to the spatial size of a system, thermodynamic observables like Pressure and Volume have quantum fluctuations that cannot be ignored. They are now represented by operators; conventional…
Physics explains the laws of motion that govern the time evolution of observable properties and the dynamical response of systems to various interactions. However, quantum theory separates the observable part of physics from the…
An approach to quantum mechanics is developed which makes the Heisenberg cut between the deterministic microscopic quantum world and the partly deterministic, partly stochastic macroscopic world explicit. The microscopic system evolves…
We show that quantum properties of spacetime, encoded by noncommutativity at the Planck scale, lead to a generalized time evolution of quantum systems in which pure states can evolve into mixed states. Specifically, a decoherence mechanism…
Nonequilibrium states of closed quantum many-body systems defy a thermodynamic description. As a consequence, constraints such as the principle of equal a priori probabilities in the microcanonical ensemble can be relaxed, which can lead to…
Conversion of chemical energy into mechanical work is the fundamental mechanism of several natural phenomena at the nanoscale, like molecular machines and Brownian motors. Quantum mechanical effects are relevant for optimising these…
The precision of nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems is fundamentally limited, yet how quantum coherence shapes these limits remains largely unexplored. A general theoretical framework is introduced that explicitly links quantum coherence…
The quantum description of time evolution in non-linear gravitational systems such as cosmological space-times is not well understood. We show, in the simplified setting of mini-superspace, that time evolution of this system can be obtained…
This article aims to explain some of the basic facts about the questions raised in the title, without the technical details that are available in the literature. We provide a gentle introduction to some rather classical results about…
We propose a novel approach to intrinsic decoherence without adding new assumptions to standard Quantum Mechanics. We generalize the Liouville equation just by requiring the dynamical semigroup property of time evolution and dropping the…
It is widely believed that the underlying reality behind statistical mechanics is a deterministic and unitary time evolution of a many-particle wave function, even though this is in conflict with the irreversible, stochastic nature of…
Simulations are performed of a small quantum system interacting with a quantum environment. The system consists of various initial states of two harmonic oscillators coupled to give normal modes. The environment is "designed" by its level…
One of the fundamental problems of modern physics is how the classical world, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and the whole irreversibility emerges from the quantum reality with reversible evolution. This relates to the problem of measurement…
Of indisputable relevance for non-equilibrium thermodynamics, fluctuations theorems have been generalized to the framework of quantum thermodynamics, with the notion of work playing a key role in such contexts. The typical approach consists…
A genuine feature of projective quantum measurements is that they inevitably alter the mean energy of the observed system if the measured quantity does not commute with the Hamiltonian. Compared to the classical case, Jacobs proved that…
We propose a novel approach to intrinsic decoherence without adding new assumptions to standard quantum mechanics. We generalize the Liouville equation just by requiring the dynamical semigroup property of time evolution and dropping the…
A fundamental aspect of the quantum-to-classical limit is the transition from a non-commutative algebra of observables to commutative one. However, this transition is not possible if we only consider unitary evolutions. One way to describe…
Quantum decoherence is seen as an undesired source of irreversibility that destroys quantum resources. Quantum coherences seem to be a property that vanishes at thermodynamic equilibrium. Away from equilibrium, quantum coherences challenge…