Thermodynamics is a phenomenological theory describing the energy conversion of work and heat. At its origins thermodynamics was developed in order to understand and improve heat engines. In conventional thermodynamics, however, only such processes are completely describable which are slow enough to keep the system of interest in an equilibrium state with its thermal environment at all times. On the contrary, all real physical processes are accompanied by non-equilibrium phenomena. These are mathematically described with the help of the irreversible entropy production, i.e. the dissipated work divided by the temperature of the bath. The second law of thermodynamics merely states that the irreversible entropy production is on average always positive. The modern trend of miniaturization, however, leads to smaller and smaller devices. On short length scales thermal noise as well as quantum fluctuations become important. Thus, usual thermodynamic quantities as work and heat acquire stochastic nature. Moreover, in the quantum regime a completely new theory had to be invented, since classical notions of work and heat are no longer valid. The present dissertation contributes to this prevailing field by the derivation of analytical expressions for the entropy production in open and closed quantum system far from thermal equilibrium. The theoretical treatment is motivated by an experimental point of view. The obtained results were derived from the reduced dynamics of the quantum mechanical system, which may be coupled to a thermal bath. To this end, it was dealt with methods and approaches of statistical physics, conventional thermodynamics, quantum information theory and the theory of open quantum systems. In this dissertation the most important physical systems are treated. First, an isolated system is considered before later on a heat bath is included. The limit of weak as well as of strong coupling are analyzed in detail. For isolated systems it turns out that a geometric approach is able to capture the thermodynamic properties, completely. To this end, the irreversible entropy production is sharply estimated from below by the angle between the real non-equilibrium state and the corresponding equilibrium one. Further, it is shown that the Heisenberg uncertainty relation for energy and time can be formulated more precisely in terms of that angle. As experimental system cold ion traps are introduced, in which the theoretical predictions can be verified. For weakly coupled systems, then, the irreversible entropy production is identified and a fluctuation theorem is derived by merely thermodynamic arguments. As experimental system we, again, propose the cold ion traps, where the heat bath can be simulated with the help of LASER light. In the limit of strong coupling a semiclassical description of the reduced quantum system is discussed. Again, an analytically exact expression for the entropy production and the corresponding fluctuation theorem is derived. A physical system, in which strong coupling to the environment can be analyzed, is given by Josephson junctions. This dissertation discusses the entropy production for isolated, weakly coupled, and overdamped quantum systems. For these physical regimes analytical relation are derived and experimental systems proposed, with which the predictions can be verified.
We study nonequilibrium thermodynamic properties of a driven one-dimensional quantum fluid by combining nonlinear Luttinger liquid theory with the quantum kinetic equation. In particular, we derive an entropy production consistent with the laws of thermodynamics for a system subject to an arbitrary perturbation varying slowly in space and time. Working in a basis of weakly interacting fermionic quasiparticles, we show that the leading contribution to the entropy production results from three-particle collisions, and we derive its scaling law at low temperatures.
In this paper, Non-Equilibrium Steady State that is induced by electric field and the conductivity of non-interacting fermion systems under the dissipative dynamics is discussed. The dissipation is taken into account within a framework of the quantum dynamical semigroup introduced by Davies (1977). We obtain a formula of the conductivity for the stationary state, which is applicable to arbitrary potentials. Our formula gives a justification of an adiabatic factor that is often introduced in practical calculation while using the Kubo formula. In addition, the conductivity of crystals (i.e., periodic potentials) is also discussed.
In this paper, we analytically investigate a diatomic molecule subject to the Morse potential under the small oscillations regime, immersed in a medium with a point defect representing impurities or vacancies in an elastic system. Initially, we apply the small oscillations method to the Morse potential to obtain an analogue to the harmonic potential, and then we solve the generalized Schrödinger equation considering the geometric effects of the defect. The solutions obtained for the bound states reveal that the energy levels and the radial stability point of the molecule are modified by the presence of the defect, depending on the parameters associated with the geometry of the medium. In a second step, we analyze the thermodynamic properties of the system in contact with a thermal reservoir at finite temperature. We derive analytical expressions for the internal energy, Helmholtz free energy, entropy, and specific heat, showing that all these quantities are influenced by the presence of the point defect. The results demonstrate how structural defects alter the quantum and thermodynamic behavior of confined molecules, contributing to the understanding of systems in non-trivial elastic media.
The quantum fluctuations of the entropy production for fermionic systems in the Landauer-Büttiker nonequilibrium steady state are investigated. The probability distribution, governing these fluctuations, is explicitly derived by means of quantum field theory methods and analyzed in the zero frequency limit. It turns out that microscopic processes with positive, vanishing and negative entropy production occur in the system with nonvanishing probability. In spite of this fact, we show that all odd moments (in particular, the mean value of the entropy production) of the above distribution are non-negative. This result extends the second principle of thermodynamics to the quantum fluctuations of the entropy production in the Landauer-Büttiker state. The effect of the time reversal is also discussed.
Efficiently bounding large determinants is an essential step in non-relativistic fermionic constructive quantum field theory to prove the absolute convergence of the perturbation expansion of correlation functions in terms of powers of the strength uinmathbbR of the interparticle interaction. We provide, for large determinants of fermionic convariances, sharp bounds which hold for all (bounded and unbounded, the latter not being limited to semibounded) one-particle Hamiltonians. We find the smallest universal determinant bound to be exactly 1. In particular, the convergence of perturbation series at u=0 of any fermionic quantum field theory is ensured if the matrix entries, with respect to some fixed orthonormal basis, of the covariance and the interparticle interaction decay sufficiently fast. Our proofs use H\\"{o}lder inequalities for general non-commutative Lp-spaces derived by Araki and Masuda.