In open quantum systems, a clear distinction between work and heat is often challenging, and extending the quantum Jarzynski equality to systems evolving under general quantum channels beyond unitality remains an open problem in quantum thermodynamics. In this Letter, we introduce well-defined notions of guessed quantum heat and guessed quantum work, by exploiting the one-time measurement scheme, which only requires an initial energy measurement on the system alone. We derive a modified quantum Jarzynski equality and the principle of maximum work with respect to the guessed quantum work, which requires the knowledge of the system only. We further show the significance of guessed quantum heat and work by linking them to the problem of quantum hypothesis testing.
We derive a general information-theoretic equality for a system undergoing two projective measurements separated by a general temporal evolution. The equality implies the non-negativity of the mutual information between the measurement outcomes of the earlier and later projective measurements. We show that it also contains the Jarzynski relation between the average exponential of the thermodynamical work and the exponential of the difference between the initial and final free energy. Our result elucidates the information-theoretic underpinning of thermodynamics and explains why the Jarzynski r…
We present a method for detecting the entanglement of a state using non-equilibrium processes. A comparison of relative entropies allows us to construct an entanglement witness. The relative entropy can further be related to the quantum Jarzynski equality, allowing non-equilibrium work to be used in entanglement detection. To exemplify our results, we consider two different spin chains.
The past two decades witnessed important developments in the field of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Among these developments, the Jarzynski equality, being a milestone following the landmark work of Clausius and Kelvin, stands out. The Jarzynski equality relates the free energy difference between two equilibrium states and the work done on the system through far from equilibrium processes. While experimental tests of the equality have been performed in classical regime, the verification of the quantum Jarzynski equality has not yet been fully demonstrated due to experimental challenge…
We show that the quantum Jarzynski equality generalizes to $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric quantum mechanics with unbroken $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry. In the regime of broken $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry the Jarzynski equality does not hold as also the $\mathcal{CPT}$-norm is not preserved during the dynamics. These findings are illustrated for an experimentally relevant system -- two coupled optical waveguides. It turns out that for these systems the phase transition between the regimes of unbroken and broken $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry is thermodynamically inhibited as the irreversible work diverges at the cri…
The well-known Jarzynski equality, often written in the form $e^{-βΔF}=\langle e^{-βW}\rangle$, provides a non-equilibrium means to measure the free energy difference $ΔF$ of a system at the same inverse temperature $β$ based on an ensemble average of non-equilibrium work $W$. The accuracy of Jarzynski's measurement scheme was known to be determined by the variance of exponential work, denoted as ${\rm var}\left(e^{-βW}\right)$. However, it was recently found that ${\rm var}\left(e^{-βW}\right)$ can systematically diverge in both classical and quantum cases. Such divergence will necessarily po…
Jarzynski equality and related fluctuation theorems can be formulated for various setups. Such an equality was recently derived for nonunitary quantum evolutions described by unital quantum operations, i.e., for completely positive, trace-preserving maps, which preserve the maximally mixed state. We analyze here a more general case of arbitrary quantum operations on finite systems and derive the corresponding form of the Jarzynski equality. It contains a correction term due to nonunitality of the quantum map. Bounds for the relative size of this correction term are established and they are app…
We consider a time-dependent quantum linear oscillator coupled to a bath at an arbitrary strength. We then introduce a generalized Jarzynski equality (GJE) which includes the terms reflecting the system-bath coupling. This enables us to study systematically the coupling effect on the linear oscillator in a non-equilibrium process. This is also associated with the second law of thermodynamics beyond the weak-coupling limit. We next take into consideration the GJE in the classical limit. By this generalization we show that the Jarzynski equality in its original form can be associated with the se…
The Jarzynski equality equates the mean of the exponential of the negative of the work (per fixed temperature) done by a changing Hamiltonian on a system, initially in thermal equilibrium at that temperature, to the ratio of the final to the initial equilibrium partition functions of the system at that fixed temperature. It thus relates two thermal equilibrium quantum states. Here a generalization is given that relates any two quantum states of a system.
The fluctuation theorems, and in particular, the Jarzynski equality, are the most important pillars of modern non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. We extend the quantum Jarzynski equality together with the Two-Time Measurement Formalism to their ultimate range of validity -- to quantum field theories. To this end, we focus on a time-dependent version of scalar phi-four. We find closed form expressions for the resulting work distribution function, and we find that they are proper physical observables of the quantum field theory. Also, we show explicitly that the Jarzynski equality and Crooks …
A superconducting cavity model was proposed as a way to experimentally investigate the work performed in a quantum system. We found a simple mathematical relationship between the free energy variation and visibility measurement in quantum cavity context. If we consider the difference of Hamiltonian at time $t_0$ and $t_λ$ (protocol time) as a quantum work, then the Jarzynski equality is valid and the visibility can be used to determine the work done on the cavity.
We propose a new thermodynamic equality and several inequalities concerning the relationship between work and information for an isothermal process with Maxwell's demon. Our approach is based on the formulation a la Jarzynski of the thermodynamic engine and on the quantum information-theoretic characterization of the demon. The lower bound of each inequality, which is expressed in terms of the information gain by the demon and the accuracy of the demon's measurement, gives the minimum work that can be performed on a single heat bath in an isothermal process. These results are independent of th…
We show a practical application of the Jarzynski equality in quantum computation. Its implementation may open a way to solve combinatorial optimization problems, minimization of a real single-valued function, cost function, with many arguments. We consider to incorpolate the Jarzynski equality into quantum annealing, which is one of the generic algorithms to solve the combinatorial optimization problem. The ordinary quantum annealing suffers from non-adiabatic transitions whose rate is characterized by the minimum energy gap $Δ_{\rm min.}$ of the quantum system under consideration. The quantum…
The out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) diagnoses quantum chaos and the scrambling of quantum information via the spread of entanglement. The OTOC encodes forward and reverse evolutions and has deep connections with the flow of time. So do fluctuation relations such as Jarzynski's Equality, derived in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. I unite these two powerful, seemingly disparate tools by deriving a Jarzynski-like equality for the OTOC. The equality's left-hand side equals the OTOC. The right-hand side suggests a protocol for measuring the OTOC indirectly. The protocol is platform-nons…
We combine the formalisms of diagonal entropy and Jarzynski Equality to study the thermodynamic properties of closed quantum systems. Applying this approach to a quantum harmonic oscillator, the diagonal entropy offers a notion of temperature for closed systems away from equilibrium, and allows computing free-energy profiles. We also apply this approach to a hard-core boson lattice model, and discuss measures how to estimate temperature, entropy and measure work distribution functions. This technique offers a path to investigate the non-equilibrium quantum dynamics by means of performing work …
The Jarzynski equality (JE) is a remarkable statement relating transient irreversible processes to infinite-time free energy differences. Although twenty years old, the JE remains unfamiliar to many; nevertheless it is a robust and powerful law. We examine two of Einstein's most simple and well-known discoveries, one classical and one quantum, and show how each of these follows from the JE. Our first example is Einstein's relation between the drag and diffusion coefficients of a particle in Brownian motion. In this context we encounter a paradox in the macroscopic limit of the JE which is fasc…
Most non-equilibrium processes in thermodynamics are quantified only by inequalities, however the Jarzynski relation presents a remarkably simple and general equality relating non-equilibrium quantities with the equilibrium free energy, and this equality holds in both classical and quantum regimes. We report a single-spin test and confirmation of the Jarzynski relation in quantum regime using a single ultracold $^{40}Ca^{+}$ ion trapped in a harmonic potential, based on a general information-theoretic equality for a temporal evolution of the system sandwiched between two projective measurement…
We show a practical application of an well-known nonequilibrium relation, the Jarzynski equality, in quantum computation. Its implementation may open a way to solve combinatorial optimization problems, minimization of a real single-valued function, cost function, with many arguments. It has been disclosed that the ordinary quantum computational algorithm to solve a kind of hard optimization problems, has a bottleneck that its computational time is restricted to be extremely slow without relevant errors. However, by our novel strategy shown in the present study, we might overcome such a difficu…
We obtain the Crooks and the Jarzynski non-equilibrium fluctuation relations using a direct quantum-mechanical approach for a finite system that is either isolated or coupled not too strongly to a heat bath. These results were hitherto derived mostly in the classical limit. The two main ingredients in the picture are the time-reversal symmetry and the application of the first law to the case where an agent performs work on the system. No further assumptions regarding stochastic or Markovian behavior are necessary, neither a master equation or a classical phase-space picture are required. The s…
It has been established that the inclusive work for classical, Hamiltonian dynamics is equivalent to the two-time energy measurement paradigm in isolated quantum systems. However, a plethora of other notions of quantum work has emerged, and thus the natural question arises whether any other quantum notion can provide motivation for purely classical considerations. In the present analysis, we propose the conditional stochastic work for classical, Hamiltonian dynamics, which is inspired by the one-time measurement approach. This novel notion is built upon the change of expectation value of the e…
We propose a scheme to investigate the nonequilibrium work distribution of a quantum particle under well controlled transformations of the external potential, exploiting the versatility of a single ion in a segmented linear Paul trap. We describe in detail how the motional quantum state of a single ion can be prepared, manipulated and finally read out to fully determine the free energy difference in both harmonic and anharmonic potentials. Uniquely to our system, we show how an ion may be immersed in an engineered laser--field reservoir. Trapped ions therefore represent an ideal tool for inves…
A result of great theoretical and experimental interest, Jarzynski equality predicts a free energy change $ΔF$ of a system at inverse temperature $β$ from an ensemble average of non-equilibrium exponential work, i.e., $\langle e^{-βW}\rangle =e^{-βΔF}$. The number of experimental work values needed to reach a given accuracy of $ΔF$ is determined by the variance of $e^{-βW}$, denoted ${\rm var}(e^{-βW})$. We discover in this work that ${\rm var}(e^{-βW})$ in both harmonic and an-harmonic Hamiltonian systems can systematically diverge in non-adiabatic work protocols, even when the adiabatic prot…
Many studies of quantum-size heat engines assume that the dynamics of an internal system is unitary and that the extracted work is equal to the energy loss of the internal system. Both assumptions, however, should be under scrutiny. In the present paper, we analyze quantum-scale heat engines, employing the measurement-based formulation of the work extraction recently introduced by Hayashi and Tajima~[arXiv:1504.06150]. We first demonstrate the inappropriateness of the unitary time evolution of the internal system (namely the first assumption above) using a simple two-level system; we show that…
Since the first suggestion of the Jarzynski equality many derivations of this equality have been presented in both, the classical and the quantum context. While the approaches and settings greatly differ from one to another, they all appear to rely on the initial state being a thermal Gibbs state. Here, we present an investigation of work distributions in driven isolated quantum systems, starting off from pure states that are close to energy eigenstates of the initial Hamiltonian. We find that, for the nonintegrable system in quest, the Jarzynski equality is fulfilled to good accuracy.
Symmetry-Enforced Non-Hermitian Jarzynski Equality in an SU(2)-Rotated Family of Hybrid $\mathcal{PT}$--$\mathcal{APT}$ Systems
Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学）；Shenzhen Research Institute of Sun Yat-Sen University（中山大学深圳研究院）；Quantum Science Center of Guangdong-HongKong-Macao Greater Bay Area（粤港澳大湾区量子科学中心）；Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Quantum Metrology and Sensing（广东省量子计量与传感重点实验室）；State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies（光电信息材料与技术的国家重点实验室）
We present a generalization of Jarzynski's Equality, applicable to quantum systems, relating discretized mechanical work and free-energy changes. The theory is based on a step-wise pulling protocol. We find that work distribution functions can be constructed from fluctuations of a reaction coordinate along a reaction pathway in the step-wise pulling protocol. We also propose two sets of equations to determine the two possible optimal pathways that provide the most significant contributions to free-energy changes. We find that the transitions along these most optimal pathways, satisfying both s…
A system--bath (SB) model is considered to examine the Jarzynski equality in the fully quantum regime. In our previous paper [J. Chem. Phys. 153 (2020) 234107], we carried out "exact" numerical experiments using hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) in which we demonstrated that the SB model describes behavior that is consistent with the first and second laws of thermodynamics and that the dynamics of the total system are time irreversible. The distinctive quantity in the Jarzynski equality is the "work characteristic function (WCF)", $\langle \exp[-βW] \rangle$, where $W$ is the work perfor…
The quantum Jarzynski equality is an important theorem of modern quantum thermodynamics. We show that the Jarzynski equality readily generalizes to relativistic quantum mechanics described by the Dirac equation. After establishing the conceptual framework we solve a pedagogical, yet experimentally relevant, system analytically. As a main result we obtain the exact quantum work distributions for charged particles traveling through a time-dependent vector potential evolving under Schrödinger as well as under Dirac dynamics, and for which the Jarzynski equality is verified. Special emphasis is pu…
We present quantum versions of the Jarzynski equality for the energy costs of information processes, namely the measurement and the information erasure. We also obtain inequalities for the energy costs of the information processes, using the Jensen inequality. The inequalities include Sagawa and Ueda's inequalities [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 250602 (2009)] as a special case.
A general tool for description of open quantum systems is given by the formalism of quantum operations. Most important of them are trace-preserving maps also known as quantum channels. We discuss those conditions on quantum channels under which the Jarzynski equality and related fluctuation theorems hold. It is essential that the representing quantum channel be unital. Under the mentioned condition, we first derive the corresponding Jarzynski equality. For bistochastic map and its adjoint, we further formulate a theorem of Tasaki-Crooks type. In the context of unital channels, some notes on he…
We study the thermodynamics of quantum projective measurements by using the set up for the Jarzynski equality. We prove the fluctuations of energy change induced by measurements satisfy the Jarzynski equality, revealing that the quantum projective measurements perform a work on a measured system. When the system is brought into a thermal contact with a reservoir after measurements, the work done by projective measurements is totally dissipated in the form of heat from the system into the reservoir. Explicitly showing that the measurements always increase the total entropy, we prove the link be…
Based on the observation that the thermodynamic equilibrium free energy of an open quantum system in contact with a thermal environment can be understood as the difference between the free energy of the total system and that of the bare environment, the validity of the Crooks theorem and of the Jarzynski equality is extended to open quantum systems. No restrictions on the nature of the environment or on the strength of the coupling between system and environment need to be imposed. This free energy entering the Crooks theorem and the Jarzynski equality is closely related to the Hamiltonian of …
The probability densities of work that can be exerted on a quantum system initially staying in thermal equilibrium are constrained by the fluctuation relations of Jarzynski and Crooks, when the work is determined by two projective energy measurements. We investigate the question whether these fluctuation relations may still hold if one employs generalized energy measurements rather than projective ones. Restricting ourselves to a class of universal measurements which are independent of several details of the system on which the work is done, we find sets of necessary and sufficient conditions …
We derive a number of exact relations between equilibrium and nonequilibrium quantities for spin glasses in external fields using the Jarzynski equality and gauge symmetry. For randomly-distributed longitudinal fields, a lower bound is established for the work done on the system in nonequilibrium processes, and identities are proven to relate equilibrium and nonequilibrium quantities. In the case of uniform transverse fields, identities are proven between physical quantities and exponentiated work done to the system at different parts of the phase diagram with the context of quantum annealing …
On the basis of a quantum mechanical analogue of the famous Feynman-Kac formula and the Kolmogorov picture, we present a novel method to derive nonequilibrium work equalities for isolated quantum systems, which include the Jarzynski equality and Bochkov-Kuzovlev equality. Compared with previous methods in the literature, our method shows higher similarity in form to that deriving the classical fluctuation relations, which would give important insight when exploring new quantum fluctuation relations.
We demonstrate with an experiment how molecules are a natural test-bed for probing fundamental quantum thermodynamics. Single-molecule spectroscopy has undergone transformative change in the past decade with the advent of techniques permitting individual molecules to be distinguished and probed. By considering the time-resolved emission spectrum of organic molecules as arising from quantum jumps between states, we demonstrate that the quantum Jarzynski equality is satisfied in this set-up. This relates the heat dissipated into the environment to the free energy difference between the initial a…
Here we investigate the impact of temporal entanglement on a system's ability to perform thermodynamical work. We show that while the quantum version of the Jarzynski equality remains satisfied even in the presence of temporal entanglement, the individual thermodynamical work moments in the expansion of the free energy are, in fact, sensitive to the genuine quantum correlations. Therefore, while individual moments of the amount of thermodynamical work can be larger (or smaller) quantumly than classically, when they are all combined together into the (exponential of) free energy, the total effe…
We study the statistics of energy fluctuations in a three-level quantum system subject to a sequence of projective quantum measurements. We check that, as expected, the quantum Jarzynski equality holds provided that the initial state is thermal. The latter condition is trivially satisfied for two-level systems, while this is generally no longer true for $N$-level systems, with $N > 2$. Focusing on three-level systems, we discuss the occurrence of a unique energy scale factor $β_{\rm eff}$ that formally plays the role of an effective inverse temperature in the Jarzynski equality. To this aim, w…
In recent years a quantum information theoretic framework has emerged for incorporating non-classical phenomena into fluctuation relations. Here we elucidate this framework by exploring deviations from classical fluctuation relations resulting from the athermality of the initial thermal system and quantum coherence of the system's energy supply. In particular we develop Crooks-like equalities for an oscillator system which is prepared either in photon added or photon subtracted thermal states and derive a Jarzynski-like equality for average work extraction. We use these equalities to discuss t…
The fluctuation theorem, where the central quantity is the work distribution, is an important characterization of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. In this work, based on the dissipaton-equation-of-motion theory, we develop an exact method to evaluate the work distributions in quantum impurity system-bath mixing processes, in the presence of non-Markovian and strong couplings. Our results not only precisely reproduce the Jarzynski equality and Crooks relation, but also reveal rich information on large deviation. The numerical demonstrations are carried out with a spin-boson model system.
The transient quantum fluctuation theorems of Crooks and Jarzynski restrict and relate the statistics of work performed in forward and backward forcing protocols. So far these theorems have been obtained under the assumption that the work is determined by projective measurements at the end and the beginning of each run of the protocols. We found that one can replace these projective measurements only by special error-free generalized energy measurements with pairs of tailored, protocol-dependent post-measurement states that satisfy detailed balance-like relations. For other generalized measure…
Thermodynamics is the phenomenological theory of heat and work. Here we analyze to what extent quantum thermodynamic relations are immune to the underlying mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. As a main result, we show that the Jarzynski equality holds true for all non-hermitian quantum systems with real spectrum. This equality expresses the second law of thermodynamics for isothermal processes arbitrarily far from equilibrium. In the quasistatic limit however, the second law leads to the Carnot bound which is fulfilled even if some eigenenergies are complex provided they appear in c…
Fluctuation theorems for thermally isolated driven quantum systems: nonadiabaticity, excess work and strong inequalities
Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin, Universidade Estadual de Campinas（坎皮纳斯州立大学格莱布·瓦塔金物理研究所）；NEST, Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR, Scuola Normale Superiore（意大利国家研究委员会纳米科学研究所）
Generalized measurements of an observable performed on a quantum system during a force protocol are investigated and conditions that guarantee the validity of the Jarzynski equality and the Crooks relation are formulated. In agreement with previous studies by Campisi {\it et al.} [M. Campisi, P. Talkner, and P. Hänggi, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 105}, 140601 (2010); Phys. Rev. E {\bf 83}, 041114 (2011)], we find that these fluctuation relations are satisfied for projective measurements; however, for generalized measurements special conditions on the operators determining the measurements need to be…
Quantum annealing is a generic algorithm using quantum-mechanical fluctuations to search for the solution of an optimization problem. The present paper first reviews the fundamentals of quantum annealing and then reports on preliminary results for an alternative method. The review part includes the relationship of quantum annealing with classical simulated annealing. We next propose a novel quantum algorithm which might be available for hard optimization problems by using a classical-quantum mapping as well as the Jarzynski equality introduced in nonequilibrium statistical physics.
