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arXiv:1303.5471 · Annals of Physics

The second law of thermodynamics under unitary evolution and external operations

Tatsuhiko N. Ikeda, Naoyuki Sakumichi, Anatoli Polkovnikov, Masahito Ueda

Published Jan 10, 2015• 42 citations
arXivHTMLPDF
DOI
10.1016/j.aop.2015.01.003

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The second law of thermodynamics for adiabatic operations -- constraints on state transitions in closed systems under external control -- is one of the fundamental principles of thermodynamics. On the other hand, it is recently established that even pure quantum states can represent thermal equilibrium. However, pure quantum states do not satisfy the second law in that they are not passive, i.e., work can be extracted from them if arbitrary unitary operations are allowed. It therefore remains unresolved how quantum mechanics can be reconciled with thermodynamics. Here, based on our key quantum-mechanical notions of thermal equilibrium and adiabatic operations, we address the emergence of the second law for adiabatic operations in the thermodynamics limit. We first introduce infinite-observable macroscopic thermal equilibrium (iMATE); a quantum state, including pure states, is in iMATE if the expectation values of all additive observables agree with their equilibrium values. We also introduce a macroscopic operation as unitary evolution generated by a time-dependent additive Hamiltonian, which is regarded as corresponding to adiabatic operations. Employing these concepts, we show that no extensive work can be extracted from any quantum state in iMATE through any macroscopic operations. Furthermore, we introduce a quantum-mechanical form of entropy density such that it agrees with thermodynamic entropy density for any quantum state in iMATE. We then prove that for any initial state in iMATE, this entropy density cannot be decreased by any macroscopic operations, followed by a time-independent relaxation process. Our theory thus proves two different forms of the second law, by adopting macroscopically reasonable classes of observables, equilibrium states, and operations. We also discuss the time scales of macroscopic operations in these results.
A version of the second law of thermodynamics states that one cannot lower the energy of an isolated system by a cyclic operation. We prove this law without introducing statistical ensembles and by resorting only to quantum mechanics. We choose the initial state as a pure quantum state whose energy is almost E_0 but not too sharply concentrated at energy eigenvalues. Then after an arbitrary unitary time evolution which follows a typical "waiting time", the probability of observing the energy lower than E_0 is proved to be negligibly small.
We examine the relationship between the second law of thermodynamics and the energy eigenstates of quantum many-body systems that undergo cyclic unitary evolution. Using a numerically optimized control protocol, we analyze how the work extractability is affected by the integrability of the system. Our findings reveal that, in nonintegrable systems the number of work-extractable energy eigenstates converges to zero, even when the local control operations are optimized. In contrast, in integrable systems, there are exponentially many eigenstates from which positive work can be extracted, regardless of the locality of the control operations. We numerically demonstrate that such a strikingly different behavior can be attributed to the number of athermal energy eigenstates. Our results provide insights into the foundations of the second law of thermodynamics in isolated quantum many-body systems, which are expected to contribute to the development of quantum many-body heat engines.