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arXiv:1507.00312

Stochastic thermodynamics in the quantum regime

Cyril Elouard, Alexia Auffèves, Maxime Clusel

Published Jul 1, 2015• 9 citations
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Abstract

This article sets up a formalism to describe stochastic thermodynamics for driven out-of-equilibrium open quantum systems. A stochastic Schrödinger equation allows to construct quantum trajectories describing the dynamics of the system state vector in presence of an eventually monitored environment. Thermodynamic quantities are defined at the single quantum trajectory level, independently of any energy measurement, at any time of the protocol. We thereby identify coherent contributions, without classical counterparts, leading to quantum fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities. This formalism eventually leads to central fluctuation theorems for entropy, extending in the quantum regime results obtained in classical stochastic thermodynamics. The thermal imprint of coherences on a simple implementation of Jarzynski equality is investigated, opening avenues for a thermodynamic approach to decoherence.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1507.00312

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This article sets up a formalism to describe stochastic thermodynamics for driven out-of-equilibrium open quantum systems. A stochastic Schrödinger equation allows to construct quantum trajectories describing the dynamics of the system state vector in presence of an eventually monitored environment. Thermodynamic quantities are defined at the single quantum trajectory level, independently of any energy measurement, at any time of the protocol. We thereby identify coherent contributions, without classical counterparts, leading to quantum fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities. This formalism eventually leads to central fluctuation theorems for entropy, extending in the quantum regime results obtained in classical stochastic thermodynamics. The thermal imprint of coherences on a simple implementation of Jarzynski equality is investigated, opening avenues for a thermodynamic approach to decoherence.
This article sets up a new formalism to investigate stochastic thermodynamics of out-of-equilibrium quantum systems, where stochasticity primarily comes from quantum measurement. In the absence of any bath, we define a purely quantum component to heat exchange, that corresponds to energy fluctuations induced by measurement back-action. By providing a central position to quantum measurement, our formalism bridges the gap between quantum optics and quantum thermodynamics: Thermal signatures of measurement induced irreversibility are identified in a simple implementation of Jarzynski equality, while quantum thermodynamics sheds new light on textbook paradoxical trajectories in quantum optics.
The thermodynamics of quantum systems driven out of equilibrium has attracted increasing attention in the last decade, in connection with quantum information and statistical physics, and with a focus on non-classical signatures. While a first approach can deal with average thermodynamics quantities over ensembles, in order to establish the impact of quantum and environmental fluctuations during the evolution, a continuous quantum measurement of the open system is required. Here, we provide an introduction to the general theoretical framework to establish and interpret the thermodynamics for quantum systems whose nonequilibrium evolution is continuously monitored. We review the formalism of quantum trajectories and its consistent application to the thermodynamic scenario, where primary quantities such as work, heat, and entropy production can be defined at the stochastic level. The connection to irreversibility and fluctuation theorems is also discussed together with some recent developments, and we provide some simple examples to illustrate the general theoretical framework.
A formalism for quantum many-body systems is proposed through a semiclassical treatment in phase space, allowing us to establish stochastic thermodynamics incorporating quantum statistics. Specifically, we utilize a stochastic Fokker-Planck equation as the dynamics at the mesoscopic level. Here, the noise term characterizing the fluctuation of the flux density accounts for the finite-NNN effects arising from random collisions between the system and the reservoir. Accordingly, the stationary solution is a quasiequilibrium state in a canonical system. We define stochastic thermodynamic quantities based on the trajectories of the phase-space distribution. The conservation law of energy, the HHH theorem, and fluctuation theorems are therefore obtained. Our work sets an alternative formalism of quantum stochastic thermodynamics that is independent of the two-point measurement scheme. The numerous projective measurements of quantum systems are replaced by the sampling of the phase-space distribution, offering hope for experimental verifications in the future.
In this paper we present a first-principles analysis of the nonequilibrium work distribution and the free energy difference of a quantum system interacting with a general environment (with arbitrary spectral density and for all temperatures) based on a well-understood microphysics (quantum Brownian motion) model under the conditions stipulated by the Jarzynski equality [Jarzynski, Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 2690 (1997)] and Crooks' fluctuation theorem [Crooks, Phys. Rev. E 60, 2721 (1999)] (in short, fluctuation theorems, FTs). We use the decoherent histories conceptual framework to explain how the notion of trajectories in a quantum system can be made viable and use the environment-induced decoherence scheme to assess the strength of noise that could provide sufficient decoherence to warrant the use of trajectories to define work in open quantum systems. From the solutions to the Langevin equation governing the stochastic dynamics of such systems we were able to produce formal expressions for these quantities entering in the FTs and from them prove explicitly the validity of the FTs at the high temperature limit. At low temperatures our general results would enable one to identify the range of parameters where FTs may not hold or need be expressed differently. We explain the relation between classical and quantum FTs and the advantage of this microphysics open-system approach over the phenomenological modeling and energy-level calculations for substitute closed quantum systems.
We propose a method to evaluate general thermodynamic fluctuations in open quantum systems, based on performing a two-point measurement scheme on the system using dynamics-dependent thermodynamic observables. Our approach allows one to obtain exact equalities for fluctuations of path-dependent thermodynamic quantities such as work and heat, and to isolate correction factors to Jarzynski's equality, requiring only access to the system degrees of freedom. This framework is flexible and can be applied to the limiting case of closed systems, recovering previous, yet seemingly contradictory, results from the literature. Moreover, the formalism admits a straightforward extension to strongly coupled open quantum systems. We investigate the effect of specific dynamical classes on the fluctuation relations, and show that the pure decoherence case is particularly special, as it deterministically does not contain any heat contribution and thus constitutes a class of open system dynamics for which the Jarzynski equality for work fluctuations is identically true at any coupling strength. Finally, we look explicitly at the shape and size of the correction factors to Jarzynski's equality for a qubit undergoing phase covariant dynamics, both in the weakly-coupled regime and in the deep non-Markovian regime.
We study the thermalization dynamics and thermodynamics of a qubit coupled to a structured, memory-carrying environment modeled as a single bosonic mode continuously thermalized by a Markovian bath. The competition between coherent qubit-mode coupling g and thermalization rate κ is controlled by the dimensionless ratio μ=g/κ, which drives a crossover between Markovian and strongly non-Markovian regimes. In the strongly non-Markovian limit, coherent energy exchange produces transient shortcuts to local thermalization, whereby the qubit approaches its thermal state long before global equilibration. In the opposite limit, we derive an original convolution master equation with an exponential memory kernel, which reduces to a thermal GKSL equation as μ→0. The crossover between the two regimes closely mirrors the underdamped-to-overdamped transition of a classical damped oscillator. From the thermodynamic side, we derive an original decomposition of the reduced entropy production in terms of qubit-ancilla mutual information and ancilla relative entropy, providing a quantitative fingerprint of non-Markovian corrections. We then extend this framework to the stochastic level via two monitoring protocols — Fock-state tracking and energy-exchange detection — constructing trajectory-level entropy productions and establishing fluctuation theorems tailored to each scheme. Together, these results demonstrate that a self-consistent stochastic thermodynamics can be formulated for non-Markovian open quantum systems under continuous monitoring.