Thermodynamic work from operational principles

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  • Freie Universität Berlin (FU Berlin)
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Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Aufsatznummer103017
FachzeitschriftNew journal of physics
Jahrgang18
Ausgabenummer10
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 12 Okt. 2016
Extern publiziertJa

Abstract

In recent years we have witnessed a concentrated effort to make sense of thermodynamics for small-scale systems. One of the main difficulties is to capture a suitable notion of work that models realistically the purpose of quantum machines, in an analogous way to the role played, for macroscopic machines, by the energy stored in the idealisation of a lifted weight. Despite several attempts to resolve this issue by putting forward specific models, these are far from realistically capturing the transitions that a quantum machine is expected to perform. In this work, we adopt a novel strategy by considering arbitrary kinds of systems that one can attach to a quantum thermal machine and defining work quantifiers. These are functions that measure the value of a transition and generalise the concept of work beyond those models familiar from phenomenological thermodynamics. We do so by imposing simple operational axioms that any reasonable work quantifier must fulfil and by deriving from them stringent mathematical condition with a clear physical interpretation. Our approach allows us to derive much of the structure of the theory of thermodynamics without taking the definition of work as a primitive. We can derive, for any work quantifier, a quantitative second law in the sense of bounding the work that can be performed using some non-equilibrium resource by the work that is needed to create it. We also discuss in detail the role of reversibility and correlations in connection with the second law. Furthermore, we recover the usual identification of work with energy in degrees of freedom with vanishing entropy as a particular case of our formalism. Our mathematical results can be formulated abstractly and are general enough to carry over to other resource theories than quantum thermodynamics.

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Thermodynamic work from operational principles. / Gallego, R.; Eisert, J.; Wilming, H.
in: New journal of physics, Jahrgang 18, Nr. 10, 103017, 12.10.2016.

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftArtikelForschungPeer-Review

Gallego R, Eisert J, Wilming H. Thermodynamic work from operational principles. New journal of physics. 2016 Okt 12;18(10):103017. doi: 10.1088/1367-2630/18/10/103017
Gallego, R. ; Eisert, J. ; Wilming, H. / Thermodynamic work from operational principles. in: New journal of physics. 2016 ; Jahrgang 18, Nr. 10.
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