Interactions of quantum systems with their environment play a crucial role in resource-theoretic approaches to thermodynamics in the microscopic regime. Here, we analyze the possible state transitions in the presence of "small" heat baths of bounded dimension and energy. We show that for operations on quantum systems with fully degenerate Hamiltonian (noisy operations), all possible state transitions can be realized exactly with a bath that is of the same size as the system or smaller, which proves a quantum version of Horn's lemma as conjectured by Bengtsson and Zyczkowski. On the other hand, if the system's Hamiltonian is not fully degenerate (thermal operations), we show that some possible transitions can only be performed with a heat bath that is unbounded in size and energy, which is an instance of the third law of thermodynamics. In both cases, we prove that quantum operations yield an advantage over classical ones for any given finite heat bath, by allowing a larger and more physically realistic set of state transitions.
Interactions of quantum systems with their environment play a crucial role in resource-theoretic approaches to thermodynamics in the microscopic regime. Here, we analyze the possible state transitions in the presence of "small" heat baths of bounded dimension and energy. We show that for operations on quantum systems with fully degenerate Hamiltonian (noisy operations), all possible state transitions can be realized exactly with a bath that is of the same size as the system or smaller, which proves a quantum version of Horn's lemma as conjectured by Bengtsson and Zyczkowski. On the other hand, if the system's Hamiltonian is not fully degenerate (thermal operations), we show that some possible transitions can only be performed with a heat bath that is unbounded in size and energy, which is an instance of the third law of thermodynamics. In both cases, we prove that quantum operations yield an advantage over classical ones for any given finite heat bath, by allowing a larger and more physically realistic set of state transitions.
Thermodynamics is one of the main pillars of theoretical physics, and it has a special appeal of having wide applicability to a large variety of different physical systems. However, many assumptions in thermodynamics apply only to systems which are bulk material, i.e. consisting a large number of microscopic classical particles. Due to the advancement of designing nanoscale engines, especially in the light of devices that are used today in the processing of quantum information, is thermodynamics still applicable? Can we refine the core principles of thermodynamics to suit such nanoscale quantum systems as well? The central aim of this thesis is to construct a theory of thermodynamics that holds for nanoscale quantum systems, even those as small and simple as a single qubit. We do this by starting out from the core basics of quantum theory: unitary dynamics on closed quantum systems. We adapt a resource theoretic approach inspired by quantum information theory, which defines the quantum states and operations allowed to be used in a thermodynamic evolution. With this framework that naturally adopts the first law as an energy preserving condition, we show the refinement of both the zeroeth and second law of thermodynamics. The zeroeth law explains the physical significance of the Gibbs thermal state. On the other hand, we show that the second law sees refinement in the quantum nanoregime: instead of having the free energy as the sole quantity dictating the possibility of a thermodynamic state transition, we derive a family of generalized free energies that also constitute necessary conditions for a transition to occur. Moreover, these conditions become sufficient for states which are block-diagonal in the energy eigenbasis. In this thesis, we also brought our approach of thermodynamics to the next step: we apply our findings on the second laws, in order to analyze the maximum achievable efficiency for quantum heat engines. In classical thermodynamics, the Carnot efficiency has been long known as the theoretical maximum which does not depend on the specific structure of the thermal baths used, but only on its temperature. With the additional free energies we discover, we show that although quantum heat engines may achieve the Carnot efficiency, such an achievability is no longer independent of the Hamiltonians of the thermal baths. In other words, we find additional restrictions that surface in the study of quantum nanoscale heat engines, which are a direct consequence of the generalized second laws. This has provided us with a deeper understanding into the fundamental limitations of how efficient devices can be made in the realm of microscopic quantum systems.
Recent work using tools from quantum information theory has shown that for small systems where quantum e↵ects become prevalent, there is not one thermodynamical second law but many. Derivations of these laws assume that an experimenter has very precise control of the system and heat bath. Here we show that these multitude of laws can be saturated using two very simple operations: changing the energy levels of the system and thermalizing over any two system energy levels. Using these two operations, one can distill the optimal amount of work from a system, as well as perform the reverse formation process. What is more, using only these two operations and one ancilla qubit in a thermal state, one can transform any state into any other state allowable by the second laws. We thus have the result that the second laws hold for fine-grained manipulation of system and bath, but can be achieved using very coarse control. This brings the full array of thermal operations towards a regime accessible by experiment, and establishes the physical relevance of these second laws, potentially opening a new direction of studies.
The second law of thermodynamics places constraints on state transformations. It applies to systems composed of many particles, however, we are seeing that one can formulate laws of thermodynamics when only a small number of particles are interacting with a heat bath. Is there a second law of thermodynamics in this regime? Here, we find that for processes which are approximately cyclic, the second law for microscopic systems takes on a different form compared to the macroscopic scale, imposing not just one constraint on state transformations, but an entire family of constraints. We find a family of free energies which generalize the traditional one, and show that they can never increase. The ordinary second law relates to one of these, with the remainder imposing additional constraints on thermodynamic transitions. We find three regimes which determine which family of second laws govern state transitions, depending on how cyclic the process is. In one regime one can cause an apparent violation of the usual second law, through a process of embezzling work from a large system which remains arbitrarily close to its original state. These second laws are relevant for small systems, and also apply to individual macroscopic systems interacting via long-range interactions. By making precise the definition of thermal operations, the laws of thermodynamics are unified in this framework, with the first law defining the class of operations, the zeroth law emerging as an equivalence relation between thermal states, and the remaining laws being monotonicity of our generalized free energies.
The second law of thermodynamics places a limitation into which states a system can evolve into. For systems in contact with a heat bath, it can be combined with the law of energy conservation, and it says that a system can only evolve into another if the free energy goes down. Recently, it's been shown that there are actually many second laws, and that it is only for large macroscopic systems that they all become equivalent to the ordinary one. These additional second laws also hold for quantum systems, and are, in fact, often more relevant in this regime. They place a restriction on how the probabilities of energy levels can evolve. Here, we consider additional restrictions on how the coherences between energy levels can evolve. Coherences can only go down, and we provide a set of restrictions which limit the extent to which they can be maintained. We find that coherences over energy levels must decay at rates that are suitably adapted to the transition rates between energy levels. We show that the limitations are matched in the case of a single qubit, in which case we obtain the full characterization of state-to-state transformations. For higher dimensions, we conjecture that more severe constraints exist. We also introduce a new class of thermodynamical operations which allow for greater manipulation of coherences and study its power with respect to a class of operations known as thermal operations.
Quantum thermodynamics is a blossoming research program that uses tools and ideas from quantum information theory to extend the laws of thermodynamics to the domain of systems to which the laws of quantum mechanics apply and the thermodynamic limit does not necessarily apply. The contributions of this program are both foundational, in providing an approach to constructively derive the laws of phenomenological thermodynamics from the postulates of unitary quantum mechanics in a rigorous and bottom-up fashion, but also prac- tical, in providing the theory for an increasing number of experiments that attempt to build thermodynamic machines at scales that were previously inaccessible. One key mathematical tool used in quantum thermodynamics is the framework of resource theories, specifically the resource theory of thermal operations, in which the thermodynamic interaction of a system with a heat bath and various additional components such as work batteries, clocks or catalysts are modeled. In this cumulative thesis, various extensions and modifications of this framework are studied in order to derive novel results and insights about the possible thermodynamic evolution of quantum systems. In particular, following a system- atic exposition of the resource theory of thermal operations from first principles, I develop answers to the following questions: i) What is the smallest heat bath required to provide the necessary randomness for a system to undergo a given stochastic or thermodynamical evolution? ii) Does this size differ depending on whether the interaction between bath and system is quantum or classical? iii) How can quantum systems thermodynamically evolve in the presence of catalytic bystander systems and how can this be put to use? iv) What are the thermodynamic state transitions that an agent can operationally affect when she only has access to partial information about the underlying states of system and bath? v) How can we understand the emergence of the canonical ensemble in statistical thermodynamics from quantum mechanics? These questions cover a wide ground, but it will become clear that they can in fact all be discussed using the same formal tools. As such, the answers to the above questions provided in this thesis are both interesting in their own right — showing for example that there exists a gap in how efficiently randomness can be exploited quantumly as compared to classically or that catalytic bystander systems can be used to extract finite amounts of work per particle from macroscopic systems with non-vanishing probability — as well as illustrate the power of quantum thermodynamics as a set of tools to connect quantum mechanics and the theory of thermodynamics more generally.
Sadi Carnot's theorem regarding the maximum efficiency of heat engines is considered to be of fundamental importance in thermodynamics. This theorem famously states that the maximum efficiency depends only on the temperature of the heat baths used by the engine, but not on the specific structure of baths. Here, we show that when the heat baths are finite in size, and when the engine operates in the quantum nanoregime, a revision to this statement is required. We show that one may still achieve the Carnot efficiency, when certain conditions on the bath structure are satisfied; however if that is not the case, then the maximum achievable efficiency can reduce to a value which is strictly less than Carnot. We derive the maximum efficiency for the case when one of the baths is composed of qubits. Furthermore, we show that the maximum efficiency is determined by either the standard second law of thermodynamics, analogously to the macroscopic case, or by the non increase of the max relative entropy, which is a quantity previously associated with the single shot regime in many quantum protocols. This relative entropic quantity emerges as a consequence of additional constraints, called generalized free energies, that govern thermodynamical transitions in the nanoregime. Our findings imply that in order to maximize efficiency, further considerations in choosing bath Hamiltonians should be made, when explicitly constructing quantum heat engines in the future. This understanding of thermodynamics has implications for nanoscale engineering aiming to construct small thermal machines.