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arXiv:0803.2808 · Physical Review E

Statistics of work performed on a forced quantum oscillator

Peter Talkner A, Poornachandra Sekhar Burada, Peter Hänggi A

Published Jul 18, 2008• 63 citations
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Abstract

Various aspects of the statistics of work performed by an external classical force on a quantum mechanical system are elucidated for a driven harmonic oscillator. In this special case two parameters are introduced that are sufficient to completely characterize the force protocol. Explicit results for the characteristic function of work and the corresponding probability distribution are provided and discussed for three different types of initial states of the oscillator: microcanonical, canonical, and coherent states. Depending on the choice of the initial state the probability distributions of the performed work may greatly differ. This result in particular also holds true for identical force protocols. General fluctuation and work theorems holding for microcanonical and canonical initial states are confirmed.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.78.011115

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Various aspects of the statistics of work performed by an external classical force on a quantum mechanical system are elucidated for a driven harmonic oscillator. In this special case two parameters are introduced that are sufficient to completely characterize the force protocol. Explicit results for the characteristic function of work and the corresponding probability distribution are provided and discussed for three different types of initial states of the oscillator: microcanonical, canonical, and coherent states. Depending on the choice of the initial state the probability distributions of the performed work may greatly differ. This result in particular also holds true for identical force protocols. General fluctuation and work theorems holding for microcanonical and canonical initial states are confirmed.
Recently, a quantum-mechanical proof of the increase of Boltzmann entropy in quantum systems that are coupled to an external classical source of work has been given. Here we illustrate this result by applying it to a forced quantum harmonic oscillator. We show plots of the actual temporal evolution of work and entropy for various forcing protocols. We note that entropy and work can be partially or even fully returned to the source, although both work and entropy balances are non-negative at all times in accordance with the minimal work principle and the Clausius principle, respectively. A necessary condition for the increase of entropy is that the initial distribution is decreasing (e.g., canonical). We show evidence that for a nondecreasing distribution (e.g., microcanonical), the quantum expectation of entropy may decrease slightly. Interestingly, the classical expectation of entropy cannot decrease, irrespective of the initial distribution, in the forced harmonic oscillator.
Previously derived expressions for the characteristic function of work performed on a quantum system by a classical external force are generalized to arbitrary initial states of the considered system and to Hamiltonians with degenerate spectra. In the particular case of microcanonical initial states, explicit expressions for the characteristic function and the corresponding probability density of work are formulated. Their classical limit as well as their relations to the corresponding canonical expressions are discussed. A fluctuation theorem is derived that expresses the ratio of probabilities of work for a process and its time reversal to the ratio of densities of states of the microcanonical equilibrium systems with corresponding initial and final Hamiltonians. From this Crooks-type fluctuation theorem a relation between entropies of different systems can be derived which does not involve the time-reversed process. This entropy-from-work theorem provides an experimentally accessible way to measure entropies.
The statistical properties of systems of coupled quantum-mechanical harmonic oscillators are analyzed. The Hamiltonian for the system is assumed to be an inhomogeneous quadratic form in the creation and annihilation operators, and is allowed to have an explicit time dependence. The relationship to classical theory is emphasized by expressing pure states in terms of the coherent-state vectors, and density operators by means of the PPP representation and an analogous representation involving the Wigner function. The state which evolves from an initially coherent state of the system is found, and equations governing the time evolution of the Wigner function and the weight function for the PPP representation are derived, in differential and integral form, for arbitrary initial states of the system. The results remain valid for couplings which do not preserve the vacuum state, and for cases in which the time dependence of the coupling parameters gives rise to large-scale amplification of the initial field intensities. The analysis is performed by first treating general linear inhomogeneous canonical transformations on the oscillator variables, and then specializing to the case in which these transformations represent the solutions for the Heisenberg operators in terms of their initial values. The results are illustrated within the context of a model of parametric amplification.
Work performed on a system in a microcanonical state by changes in a control parameter is characterized in terms of its statistics. The transition probabilities between eigenstates of the system Hamiltonians at the beginning and the end of the parameter change obey a detailed balance-like relation from which various forms of the microcanonical fluctuation theorem are obtained. As an example, sudden deformations of a two-dimensional harmonic oscillator potential are considered, and the validity of the microcanonical Jarzynski equality connecting the degrees of degeneracy of energy eigenvalues before and after the control parameter change is confirmed.
At non-zero temperature classical systems exhibit statistical fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities arising from the variation of the system's initial conditions and its interaction with the environment. The fluctuating work, for example, is characterised by the ensemble of system trajectories in phase space and, by including the probabilities for various trajectories to occur, a work distribution can be constructed. However, without phase space trajectories, the task of constructing a work probability distribution in the quantum regime has proven elusive. Here we use quantum trajectories in phase space and define fluctuating work as power integrated along the trajectories, in complete analogy to classical statistical physics. The resulting work probability distribution is valid for any quantum evolution, including cases with coherences in the energy basis. We demonstrate the quantum work probability distribution and its properties with an exactly solvable example of a driven quantum harmonic oscillator. An important feature of the work distribution is its dependence on the initial statistical mixture of pure states, which is reflected in higher moments of the work. The proposed approach introduces a fundamentally different perspective on quantum thermodynamics, allowing full thermodynamic characterisation of the dynamics of quantum systems, including the measurement process.
We compare the time evolutions of two quantum systems: a quantum harmonic oscillator driven by a classical force and two coupled quantum harmonic oscillators. We find the conditions under which the first system can be considered as a `mean-field approximation' to the second one. This happens in the weak coupling limit provided that the `master' oscillator was initially in a highly excited quantum state with small fluctuations of the canonical variables (such as the coherent state or displaced thermal state), while the `subordinate' oscillator must not be `too excited'. The essential difference between the resonance and nonresonance cases is discussed. In particular, the effect of the resonance-quantum-state exchange is demonstrated.