We consider the statistical irreversibility and its compatibility with the reversible dynamics. The role played by the observation is analyzed in detail. It makes our previous proof for the second law of thermodynamics clearer. On this basis, we emphasize the importance and wide applicability for the second law of thermodynamics. A new form of physics with this law being substituted by the principle of information conservation is suggested. By the way, we also solve the paradox of Schrödinger cat, and show that the universe will not go to the so-called heat death spontaneously.
An experimental study of the applicability of mechanics equations to describing the process of equilibrium establishing in an isolated spin system was performed. The time-reversion effects were used at the experiments. It was demonstrated, that the equations of mechanics do not describe the experimental results. The demonstration of the incomleteness of quantum mechanics description of the macrosystems annuls the contradiction which lays in the basis of the irreversibility problem.
Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学斯特拉廷化学研究所）；Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学生态进化科学研究所）；Radboud University Nijmegen（奈梅亨拉德堡德大学）
The microscopic onset of irreversibility is finally becoming an experimental subject. Recent experiments on microscopic open and even isolated systems have measured statistical properties associated with entropy production, and hysteresis-like phenomena have been seen in cold atom systems with dissipation (i.e. effectively open systems coupled to macroscopic reservoirs). Here we show how experiments on isolated systems of ultracold atoms can show dramatic irreversibility like cooking an egg. In our proposed experiments, a slow forward-and-back parameter sweep will sometimes fail to return the …
In this contribution we prove that the entropy of an N-body isolated system can not decrease and the entropy production should be non-negative provided the system possesses an equilibrium state. We define the entropy as a functional of the set of n-particle reduced density operators (n=0,....,N) generalizing the von Neumann fine-grained entropy formula. Additionally, as a consequence of our analysis we find the expression of the equilibrium n-particle reduced density operators which enter the definition of the entropy as well as the dissipated energy in an irreversible process.
A generalization of the Gibbs-von Neumann relative entropy is proposed based on the quantum BBGKY [Bogolyubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon] hierarchy as the nonequilibrium entropy for an N-body system. By using a generalization of the Liouville-von Neumann equation describing the evolution of a density super- operator, it is demonstrated that the entropy production for an isolated system is non-negative, which provides an arrow of time. Moreover, following the procedure of non-equilibrium thermodynamics a master matrix is introduced for which a mi- croscopic expression is obtained. Then, the quant…
Time-reversal had always been assumed to be a symmetry of physics at the fundamental level. In this paper we will explore the violations of time-reversal symmetry at the fundamental level and the consequences on thermodynamic systems. First, we will argue from from current physics that the universe dynamics is not time-reversal invariant. Second, we will argue that any thermodynamic system cannot be isolated from the rest of the universe. We then discuss how these two make the dynamics of thermodynamics systems very weakly irreversible at the classical and quantum level. Since time-reversal is…
Irreversibility is one of the most intriguing concepts in physics. While microscopic physical laws are perfectly reversible, macroscopic average behavior has a preferred direction of time. According to the second law of thermodynamics, this arrow of time is associated with a positive mean entropy production. Using a nuclear magnetic resonance setup, we measure the nonequilibrium entropy produced in an isolated spin-1/2 system following fast quenches of an external magnetic field and experimentally demonstrate that it is equal to the entropic distance, expressed by the Kullback-Leibler divergen…
The question of how irreversibility can emerge as a generic phenomena when the underlying mechanical theory is reversible has been a long-standing fundamental problem for both classical and quantum mechanics. We describe a mechanism for the appearance of irreversibility that applies to coherent, isolated systems in a pure quantum state. This equilibration mechanism requires only an assumption of sufficiently complex internal dynamics and natural information-theoretic constraints arising from the infeasibility of collecting an astronomical amount of measurement data. Remarkably, we are able to …
The evolution of a quasi-isolated finite quantum system from a nonequilibrium initial state is considered. The condition of quasi-isolation allows for the description of the system dynamics on the general basis, without specifying the system details and for arbitrary initial conditions. The influence of surrounding results in (at least partial) equilibration and decoherence. The resulting equilibrium state bears information on initial conditions and is characterized by a representative ensemble. It is shown that the system average information with time does not increase. The partial equilibrat…
All of the basic microsopic physical laws are time reversible. In contrast, the second law of thermodynamics, which is a macroscopic physical representation of the world, is able to describe irreversible processes in an isolated system through the change of entropy S larger than 0. It is the attempt of the present manuscript to bridge the microscopic physical world with its macrosocpic one with an alternative approach than the statistical mechanics theory of Gibbs and Boltzmann. It is proposed that time is discrete with constant step size. Its consequence is the presence of time irreversibilit…
A set of core features is set forth as the essence of a thermodynamic description, which derive from large-deviation properties in systems with hierarchies of timescales, but which are \emph{not} dependent upon conservation laws or microscopic reversibility in the substrate hosting the process. The most fundamental elements are the concept of a macrostate in relation to the large-deviation entropy, and the decomposition of contributions to irreversibility among interacting subsystems, which is the origin of the dependence on a concept of heat in both classical and stochastic thermodynamics. A …
The statistical distribution for the case of an adiabatically isolated body was obtained in the framework of covariant quantum theory and Wick's rotation in the complex time plane. The covariant formulation of the mechanics of an isolated system lies in the rejection of absolute time and the introduction of proper time as an independent dynamic variable. The equation of motion of proper time is the law of conservation of energy. In this case, the energy of an isolated system is an external parameter for the modified distribution instead of temperature.
Microscopic Dynamical Entropy I: Quantifying Hamiltonian Irreversibility in Large and Small Systems
Wilczek Quantum Center, School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学物理与天文学院）；DAMTP, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge
Typically, the entropy of an isolated system in equilibrium is calculated by counting the number of accessible microstates, or in more general cases by using the Gibbs formula. In irreversible processes entropy spontaneously increases and this is understood from statistical arguments. We propose a new measure of entropy based on the level of irreversibility of a process. This formulation agrees in first approximation with the usual methods of calculating entropy and can be readily applied in the case of a black hole in the semiclassical regime.
We propose a new approach concerning the introduction of time-irreversibility in statistical mechanics. It is based on a transition function defined in terms of path integral and verifying a time-irreversible equation. We show first how dynamic processes may enter in the description of equilibrium states. In order to do that a characteristic time is associated with closed paths. For large isolated systems at equilibrium or for systems in contact with a thermostat our results are identical with those obtained with the Gibbs ensemble methods. For a model used in the microscopic approaches of the…
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases (or does not change) by time in an isolated system. As microscopic physical laws are reversible, the origin of irreversibility is not straightforward. Although the outcome of a measurement on a pure quantum state is not fully predictable due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, quantum and finite entropy uncertainties are thought to be fundamentally different. We propose to calculate the predictability of measurements comprising both quantum and entropic uncertainties. We show that the unpredictability of measurements is identi…
To investigate the consequences of component confinement such as at a glass transition and the well-known energy or enthalpy gap (between the glass and the perfect crystal at absolute zero, see text), we follow our previous approach [Phys. Rev. E 81, 051130 (2010)] of using the second law applied to an isolated system Σ_0 consisting of the homogeneous system Σ and the medium Σ. We establish on general grounds the continuity of the Gibbs free energy G(t) of Σ as a function of time at fixed temperature and pressure of the medium. It immediately follows from this and the observed continuity of th…
In a variety of situations, isolated polymer molecules are found in a vacuum and here we examine their properties. Angular momentum conservation is shown to significantly alter the average size of a chain and its conservation is only broken slowly by thermal radiation. The time autocorrelation for monomer position oscillates with a characteristic time proportional to chain length. The oscillations and damping are analyzed in detail. Short range repulsive interactions suppress oscillations and speed up relaxation but stretched chains still show damped oscillatory time correlations.
A microscopic definition of the thermodynamic entropy in an isolated quantum system must satisfy (i) additivity, (ii) extensivity and (iii) the second law of thermodynamics. We show that the diagonal entropy, which is the Shannon entropy in the energy eigenbasis at each instant of time, meets the first two requirements and that the third requirement is satisfied if an arbitrary external operation is performed at typical times. In terms of the diagonal entropy, thermodynamic irreversibility follows from the facts that the Hamiltonian dynamics restricts quantum trajectories under unitary evoluti…
This work concerns the statistics of the Two-Time Measurement definition of heat variation in each reservoir of a thermodynamic quantum system. We study the cumulant generating function of the heat flows in the thermodynamic and large-time limits. It is well-known that, if the system is time-reversal invariant, this cumulant generating function satisfies the celebrated Evans--Searles symmetry. We show in addition that, under appropriate ultraviolet regularity assumptions on the local interaction between the reservoirs, it satisfies a translation-invariance property, as proposed in [Andrieux et…
Recently implemented quantum devices such as quantum processors and quantum simulators combine highly complicated quantum dynamics with high-resolution measurements. We present a passivity deformation methodology that sets thermodynamic constraints on the evolution of such quantum devices. This framework enhances the thermodynamic predictive power by simultaneously resolving four of the cardinal deficiencies of the second law in microscopic setups: i) It yields tight bounds even when the environment is microscopic; ii) The ultra-cold catastrophe is resolved; iii) It enables to integrate conser…
Macroscopic many-body systems always exhibit irreversible behaviors together with the entropy increase. However, the underlying microscopic dynamics of the many-body system, either the (quantum) von Neumann or (classical) Liouville equation, guarantees the entropy of an isolated system does not change with time. Notice that, in practical measurements, usually it is the partial information (e.g., marginal distribution, few-body observable expectation) that is directly accessible to our observations, rather than the full ensemble state. But indeed such partial information is sufficient to give m…
Noether's theorem is a fundamental result in physics stating that every symmetry of the dynamics implies a conservation law. It is, however, deficient in several respects: (i) it is not applicable to dynamics wherein the system interacts with an environment, and (ii) even in the case where the system is isolated, if the quantum state is mixed then the Noether conservation laws do not capture all of the consequences of the symmetries. To address these deficiencies, we introduce measures of the extent to which a quantum state breaks a symmetry. Such measures yield novel constraints on state tran…
We consider the non-equilibrium dynamics in isolated systems, described by quantum field theories (QFTs). After being prepared in a density matrix that is not an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian, such systems are expected to relax locally to a stationary state. In a presence of local conservation laws, these stationary states are believed to be described by appropriate generalized Gibbs ensembles. Here we demonstrate that in order to obtain a correct description of the stationary state, it is necessary to take into account conservation laws that are not (ultra-)local in the usual sense of QFT, bu…
The delocalization or scrambling of quantum information has emerged as a central ingredient in the understanding of thermalization in isolated quantum many-body systems. Recently, significant progress has been made analytically by modeling non-integrable systems as stochastic systems, lacking a Hamiltonian picture, while honest Hamiltonian dynamics are frequently limited to small system sizes due to computational constraints. In this paper, we address this by investigating the role of conservation laws (including energy conservation) in the thermalization process from an information-theoretic …
Conservation laws and the associated hydrodynamic modes have important consequences on the growth of higher Rényi entropies in isolated quantum systems. It has been shown in various random unitary circuits and Hamiltonian systems that the dynamics of the Rényi entropies in the presence of a U(1) symmetry obey $S^{(n\geq 2)}(t) \propto t^{1/z}$, where $z$ is identified as the dynamical exponent characterizing transport of the conserved charges. Here, however, we demonstrate that this simple identification may not hold in certain quantum systems with kinetic constraints. In particular, we study …
We show that the conservation and the non-additivity of the information, together with the additivity of the entropy make the entropy increase in an isolated system. The collapse of the entangled quantum state offers an example of the information non-additivity. Nevertheless, the later is also true in other fields, in which the interaction information is important. Examples are classical statistical mechanics, social statistics and financial processes. The second law of thermodynamics is thus proven in its most general form. It is exactly true, not only in quantum and classical physics but als…
A geometric foundation thermo-statistics is presented with the only axiomatic assumption of Boltzmann's principle S(E,N,V)=k\ln W. This relates the entropy to the geometric area e^{S(E,N,V)/k} of the manifold of constant energy in the finite-N-body phase space. From the principle, all thermodynamics and especially all phenomena of phase transitions and critical phenomena can unambiguously be identified for even small systems. The topology of the curvature matrix C(E,N) of S(E,N) determines regions of pure phases, regions of phase separation, and (multi-)critical points and lines. Within Boltzm…
Boltzmann's principle S(E,N,V)=k\ln W relates the entropy to the geometric area e^{S(E,N,V)} of the manifold of constant energy in the N-body phase space. From the principle all thermodynamics and especially all phenomena of phase transitions and critical phenomena can be deduced. The topology of the curvature matrix C(E,N) (Hessian) of S(E,N) determines regions of pure phases, regions of phase separation, and (multi-)critical points and lines. Thus, C(E,N) describes all kind of phase-transitions with all their flavor. They are linked to convex (upwards bending) intruders of S(E,N), here the c…
