Beyond heat baths II: Framework for generalized thermodynamic resource theories
Nicole Yunger Halpern
备注:
Minor updates (contributions clarified, material restored from v1, references updated). 18 pages (including 2 figures) + appendices
发表信息:
J. Phys. A 51, 094001 (2018) http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1751-8121/aaa62f/meta. For special issue "Shannon's Information Theory: 70 years on."
Thermodynamics, which describes vast systems, has been reconciled with small scales, relevant to single-molecule experiments, in resource theories. Resource theories have been used to model exchanges of energy and information. Recently, particle exchanges were modeled; and an umbrella family of thermodynamic resource theories was proposed to model diverse baths, interactions, and free energies. This paper motivates and details the family's structure and prospective applications. How to model electrochemical, gravitational, magnetic, and other thermodynamic systems is explained. Szilard's engine and Landauer's Principle are generalized, as resourcefulness is shown to be convertible not only between information and gravitational energy, but also among diverse degrees of freedom. Extensive variables are associated with quantum operators that might fail to commute, introducing extra nonclassicality into thermodynamic resource theories. An early version of this paper partially motivated the later development of noncommutative thermalization. This generalization expands the theories' potential for modeling realistic systems with which small-scale statistical mechanics might be tested experimentally.
The second law of thermodynamics states that a system in contact with a heat bath can undergo a transformation if and only if its free energy decreases. However, the "if" part of this statement is only true when the effective heat bath is infinite. In this article we remove this idealization and derive corrections to the second law in the case where the bath has a finite size, or equivalently finite heat capacity. This can also be translated to processes lasting a finite time, and we show that thermodynamical reversibility is lost in this regime. We do so in full generality, that is without as…
We consider a situation where an $N$-level system (NLS) is coupled successively to two heat baths with different temperatures without being necessarily thermalized and approaches a steady state. For this situation we apply a general Jarzinski-type equation and conclude that heat and entropy is flowing from the hot bath to the cold one. The Clausius relation between increase of entropy and transfer of heat divided by a suitable temperature assumes the form of two inequalities. Our approach is illustrated by an analytical example. For the linear regime, i.~e., for small temperature differences b…
We consider a situation where an $N$-level system (NLS) is coupled to a heat bath without being necessarily thermalized. For this situation we derive general Jarzinski-type equations and conclude that heat and entropy is flowing from the hot bath to the cold NLS and, vice versa, from the hot NLS to the cold bath. The Clausius relation between increase of entropy and transfer of heat divided by a suitable temperature assumes the form of two inequalities which have already been considered in the literature. Our approach is illustrated by an analytical example.
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Thermodynamics has recently been extended to small scales with resource theories that model heat exchanges. Real physical systems exchange diverse quantities: heat, particles, angular momentum, etc. We generalize thermodynamic resource theories to exchanges of observables other than heat, to baths other than heat baths, and to free energies other than the Helmholtz free energy. These generalizations are illustrated with "grand-potential" theories that model movements of heat and particles. Free operations include unitaries that conserve energy and particle number. From this conservation law an…
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We report here the experimental realization of multi-step cooling of a quantum system via heat-bath algorithmic cooling. The experiment was carried out using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) of a solid-state ensemble three-qubit system.
We construct a finite bath with variable temperature for quantum thermodynamic simulations in which heat flows between a system $\mathcal{S}$ and the bath environment $\mathcal{E}$ in time evolution of an initial $\mathcal{SE}$ pure state. The bath consists of harmonic oscillators that are not necessarily identical. Baths of various numbers of oscillators are considered; a bath with five oscillators is used in the simulations. The bath has a temperature-like level distribution. This leads to definition of a system-environment microcanonical temperature $T_\mathcal{SE}(t)$ which varies with tim…
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We discuss a qubit weakly coupled to a finite-size heat bath (calorimeter) from the point of view of quantum thermodynamics. The energy deposited to this environment together with the state of the qubit provides a basis to analyze the heat and work statistics of this closed combined system. We present results on two representative models, where the bath is composed of two-level systems or harmonic oscillators, respectively. Finally, we derive results for an open quantum system composed of the above qubit plus finite-size bath, but now the latter is coupled to a practically infinite bath of the…
The performance characteristics of a heat rectifier and a heat pump are studied in a non Markovian framework. The device is constructed from a molecule connected to a hot and cold reservoir. The heat baths are modelled using the stochastic surrogate Hamiltonian method. The molecule is modelled by an asymmetric double-well potential. Each well is semi-locally connected to a heat bath composed of spins. The dynamics is driven by a combined system-bath Hamiltonian. The temperature of the baths is regulated by a secondary spin bath composed of identical spins in thermal equilibrium. A random swap …
Interactions of quantum systems with their environment play a crucial role in resource-theoretic approaches to thermodynamics in the microscopic regime. Here, we analyze the possible state transitions in the presence of "small" heat baths of bounded dimension and energy. We show that for operations on quantum systems with fully degenerate Hamiltonian (noisy operations), all possible state transitions can be realized exactly with a bath that is of the same size as the system or smaller, which proves a quantum version of Horn's lemma as conjectured by Bengtsson and Zyczkowski. On the other hand,…
Probing Non-equilibrium baths: Frequency-Resolved Thermometry and Quantum Heat Current Turnover
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Department of Quantum and Classical Dynamics, Johannes Kepler Universität Linz(林茨约翰·开普勒大学理论物理系量子与经典动力学部);Schulich Faculty of Chemistry and Helen Diller Quantum Center, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology(以色列理工学院舒利希化学学院及海伦·迪勒量子中心)
We suggest alternative quantum Otto engines, using heat bath algorithmic cooling with partner pairing algorithm instead of isochoric cooling. Liquid state nuclear magnetic resonance systems in one entropy sink are considered as working fluids. Then, the extractable work and thermal efficiency are analyzed in detail for four-stroke and two-stroke type of quantum Otto engines. The role of heat bath algorithmic cooling in these cycles is to use a single entropy sink instead of two. Also, this cooling algorithm increases the power of engines reducing the time required for one cycle.
In quantum thermodynamics, effects of finiteness of the baths have been less considered. In particular, there is no general theory which focuses on finiteness of the baths of multiple conserved quantities. Then, we investigate how the optimal performance of generalized heat engines with multiple conserved quantities alters in response to the size of the baths. In the context of general theories of quantum thermodynamics, the size of the baths has been given in terms of the number of identical copies of a system, which does not cover even such a natural scaling as the volume. In consideration o…
We report on numerical simulations of the dynamics of a test particle coupled to competing Boltzmann heat baths of finite size. After discussing some features of the single bath case, we show that the presence of two heat baths further constraints the conditions necessary for the test particle to thermalize with the heat baths. We find that thermalization is a spectral property in which the oscillators of the bath with frequencies in the range of the test particle characteristic frequency determine its degree of thermalization. We also find an unexpected frequency shift of the test particle re…
Thermodynamic Roles of Quantum Environments: From Heat Baths to Work Reservoirs
Institute of Physics, University of Freiburg(弗赖堡大学物理研究所);Dipartimento di Fisica “Aldo Pontremoli”, Università degli Studi di Milano(米兰大学阿尔多·蓬特莫利物理系);EUCOR Centre for Quantum Science and Quantum Computing, University of Freiburg(弗赖堡大学EUCOR量子科学与工程中心)
We consider the quantum harmonic oscillator in contact with a finite temperature bath, modelled by the Caldeira-Leggett master equation. Applying periodic kicks to the oscillator, we study the system in different dynamical regimes between classical integrability and chaos on the one hand, and ballistic or diffusive energy absorption on the other. We then investigate the influence of the heat bath on the oscillator in each case. Phase space techniques allow us to simulate the evolution of the system efficiently. In this way, we calculate high resolution Wigner functions at long times, where the…
For heat engines working between two heat baths, functionality is often conditioned on a set of fixed constraints such as given internal structure of the engine and given temperatures for the baths. It is, however, important to devise heat engines which can function adaptively, in particular when the engine is a quantum system and the baths are subject to fluctuations. Here we study a model for an adaptive quantum heat engine whose heat baths can have variable temperatures. We obtain conditions under which such an engine can still operate. Moreover, we propose an enhancement of the heat engine…
The time evolution of occupation number is studied for fermionic or bosonic oscillator linearly fully coupled to several fermionic and bosonic heat baths. The influence of characteristics of thermal reservoirs of different statistics on the non-stationary population probability is analyzed at large times. Applications of the absence of equilibrium in such systems for creating a dynamic (nonstationary) memory storage are discussed.
We consider a single harmonic oscillator coupled to a bath at zero temperature. As is well known, the oscillator then has a higher average energy than that given by its ground state. Here we show analytically that for a damping model with arbitrarily discrete distribution of bath modes and damping models with continuous distributions of bath modes with cut-off frequencies, this excess energy is less than the work needed to couple the system to the bath, therefore, the quantum second law is not violated. On the other hand, the second law may be violated for bath modes without cut-off frequencie…
Considering a kicked rotor coupled to a model heat bath both the classical and quantum entropy productions are calculated exactly. Starting with an initial wave packet, the von Neuman entropy as a function of time is determined from the reduced density matrix while the Liouville evolution of the corresponding Husimi distribution provides us with the classical entropy. It is found that both these entropies agree reasonably satisfying the same asymptotic growth law and more importantly both are proportional to the classical Liapounov exponent.
Describing open quantum systems far from equilibrium is challenging, in particular when the environment is mesoscopic, when it develops nonequilibrium features during the evolution, or when the memory effects cannot be disregarded. Here, we derive a master equation that explicitly accounts for system-bath correlations and includes, at a coarse-grained level, a dynamically evolving bath. Such a master equation applies to a wide variety of physical systems including those described by Random Matrix Theory or the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis. We obtain a local detailed balance condition w…
Quantum technologies require pure states, which are often generated by extreme refrigeration. Heat-bath algorithmic cooling is the theoretically optimal refrigeration technique: it shuttles entropy from a multiparticle system to a thermal bath, thereby generating a quantum state with a high degree of purity. Here, we show how to surpass this hitherto-optimal technique by taking advantage of a single binary-outcome measurement. Our protocols can create arbitrary numbers of pure quantum states without any residual mixedness by using a recently discovered device known as a quantum switch to put t…
We introduce a new selected configuration interaction plus perturbation theory algorithm that is based on a deterministic analog of our recent efficient heat-bath sampling algorithm. This Heat-bath Configuration Interaction (HCI) algorithm makes use of two parameters that control the tradeoff between speed and accuracy, one which controls the selection of determinants to add to a variational wavefunction, and one which controls the the selection of determinants used to compute the perturbative correction to the variational energy. We show that HCI provides an accurate treatment of both static …
Within a generalized Caldeira-Leggett model we analyze the conditions under which a bosonic heat bath can entangle two microscopic quantum systems at a distance $r$. We find that the attainable entanglement is extremely distance-sensitive. Significant entanglement can only be achieved if the systems are within a {\em microscopic} distance that is of order of the cut-off wavelength $λ$ of the system-bath interaction. At larger distances the maximal entanglement is exponentially suppressed with a decay length of order $λ$. We conclude that entanglement generation via a heat bath is not suitable …