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arXiv:1312.6744 · Physical Review A

General fine-grained uncertainty relation and the second law of thermodynamics

Li-Hang Ren, Heng Fan

Published Nov 14, 2014• 11 citations
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Abstract

We investigate the fine-grained uncertainty relations for qubit systems by measurements corresponding respectively to two and three spin operators. Then we derive the general bound for a combination of two probabilities of projective measurements in mutually unbiased bases in $d$-dimensional Hilbert space. All of those uncertainty inequalities can be applied to construct different thermodynamic cycles such that the violation of those inequalities will lead to the violation of the second law of thermodynamics. This reveals the relationship between fine-grained uncertainty and the second law of thermodynamics.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.90.052110

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We investigate the fine-grained uncertainty relations for qubit systems by measurements corresponding respectively to two and three spin operators. Then we derive the general bound for a combination of two probabilities of projective measurements in mutually unbiased bases in ddd-dimensional Hilbert space. All of those uncertainty inequalities can be applied to construct different thermodynamic cycles such that the violation of those inequalities will lead to the violation of the second law of thermodynamics. This reveals the relationship between fine-grained uncertainty and the second law of thermodynamics.
We investigate the fine-grained uncertainty relations for qubit system by measurements corresponding to two and three spin operators. Then we derive the general bound for a combination of two probabilities of projective measurements in mutually unbiased bases in ddd-dimensional Hilbert space (ddd is prime). Those uncertainty inequalities can be applied to construct different thermodynamic cycles which all imply the second law of thermodynamics.
Bell's inequalities, in the form given by Cerf and Adami, are derived from the combination of the second law of thermodynamics and the Markov postulate. Violations of these inequalities are discussed in terms of the mixing characteristics of the density operators. A quantum mechanical bound for a system of three qubits, two of which are entangled, is found and is shown to lead to strong subadditivity in one case. Finally, in interpreting the results, the role the uncertainty relations play in the definition of entropy and the second law is discussed, demonstrating a link to Bell's inequalities. Additionally the second law is shown to be dependent on the type of measurement in quantum systems. Specifically, a more general statement of the second law appropriate to both quantum and classical systems is suggested.
In presence of quantum memory [M. Berta, M. Christandl, R. Colbeck, J.M. Renes, and R. Renner, Nature Phys. 6, 659 (2010)] the lower bound of entropic uncertainty relation depends on amount of entanglement between the particle (on which two incompatible observable are measured) and the quantum memory. On other hand, fine grained uncertainty relation [J. Oppenheim and S. Wehner, Science 330, 1072 (2010)] gives the upper bound of winning non-local (CHSH) game. We construct similar kind of quantum game and relate two uncertainty relation for measurement of any two observable on the quantum system in presence of quantum memory and show there are certain region where the lower bound of entropic uncertainty relation in presents of quantum memory given by Berta et. al. should not be achieve by spin projective measurement.
The concept of quantum coherence, including various ways to quantify the degree of coherence with respect to the prescribed basis, is currently the subject of active research. The complementarity of quantum coherence in different bases was studied by deriving upper bounds on the sum of the corresponding measures. To obtain a two-sided estimate, lower bounds on the coherence quantifiers are also of interest. Such bounds are naturally referred to as uncertainty relations for quantum coherence. We obtain new uncertainty relations for coherence quantifiers averaged with respect to a set of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs). To quantify the degree of coherence, the relative entropy of coherence and the geometric coherence are used. Further, we also derive novel state-independent uncertainty relations for a set of MUBs in terms of the min-entropy.
In both classical and quantum thermodynamics, physical quantities are typically assigned objective values defined independently of our observations. We then refer to the “work performed by a gas,” or the “entropy of the gas,” regardless of how they are evaluated. Here, we question this conception in the context of quantum thermodynamics, estimating how the definition of pivotal thermodynamic quantities is affected by experimental instruments of limited precision. We find that the coarse-grained thermodynamic quantities frequently lead to different conclusions from those drawn in fine-grained scenarios. For instance, the irreversibility of a process, or its work payoff, can significantly vary with the instrument precision. We show nonetheless that coarse-grained thermodynamic quantities satisfy the relations (i.e., the second law inequality, the relation between dissipation and distinguishability of a process from its time reverse, and the quantum work fluctuation theorems) as their fine-grained counterparts. These results highlight the observation independence of relations linking thermodynamic quantities, which are themselves observation dependent.