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arXiv:2601.20155

Universal thermodynamic implementation of a process with a variable work cost

Philippe Faist

quant-phSubmitted Jan 28, 2026• Announced Jan 29, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

The minimum amount of thermodynamic work required in order to implement a quantum computation or a quantum state transformation can be quantified using frameworks based on the resource theory of thermodynamics, deeply rooted in the works of Landauer and Bennett. For instance, the work we need to invest in order to implement $n$ independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) copies of a quantum channel is quantified by the thermodynamic capacity of the channel when we require the implementation's accuracy to be guaranteed in diamond norm over the $n$-system input. Recent work showed that work extraction can be implemented universally, meaning the same implementation works for a large class of input states, while achieving a variable work cost that is optimal for each individual i.i.d. input state. Here, we revisit some techniques leading to derivation of the thermodynamic capacity, and leverage them to construct a thermodynamic implementation of $n$ i.i.d. copies of any time-covariant quantum channel, up to some process decoherence that is necessary because the implementation reveals the amount of consumed work. The protocol uses so-called thermal operations and achieves the optimal per-input work cost for any i.i.d. input state; it relies on the conditional erasure protocol in our earlier work, adjusted to yield variable work. We discuss the effect of the work-cost decoherence. While it can significantly corrupt the correlations between the output state and any reference system, we show that for any time-covariant i.i.d. input state, the state on the output system faithfully reproduces that of the desired process to be implemented. As an immediate consequence of our results, we recover recent results for optimal work extraction from i.i.d. states up to the error scaling and implementation specifics, and propose an optimal preparation protocol for time-covariant i.i.d. states.

Comments
11+13 pages, 5 figures

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The minimum amount of thermodynamic work required in order to implement a quantum computation or a quantum state transformation can be quantified using frameworks based on the resource theory of thermodynamics, deeply rooted in the works of Landauer and Bennett. For instance, the work we need to invest in order to implement nnn independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) copies of a quantum channel is quantified by the thermodynamic capacity of the channel when we require the implementation's accuracy to be guaranteed in diamond norm over the nnn-system input. Recent work showed that work extraction can be implemented universally, meaning the same implementation works for a large class of input states, while achieving a variable work cost that is optimal for each individual i.i.d. input state. Here, we revisit some techniques leading to derivation of the thermodynamic capacity, and leverage them to construct a thermodynamic implementation of nnn i.i.d. copies of any time-covariant quantum channel, up to some process decoherence that is necessary because the implementation reveals the amount of consumed work. The protocol uses so-called thermal operations and achieves the optimal per-input work cost for any i.i.d. input state; it relies on the conditional erasure protocol in our earlier work, adjusted to yield variable work. We discuss the effect of the work-cost decoherence. While it can significantly corrupt the correlations between the output state and any reference system, we show that for any time-covariant i.i.d. input state, the state on the output system faithfully reproduces that of the desired process to be implemented. As an immediate consequence of our results, we recover recent results for optimal work extraction from i.i.d. states up to the error scaling and implementation specifics, and propose an optimal preparation protocol for time-covariant i.i.d. states.
We study thermodynamic state transformations in the resource theory of work and heat when the initial quantum state is unknown. Moving beyond state-dependent protocols, we develop a universal framework in which a single transformation applies to all admissible input states. For mutually commuting conserved charges, we construct charge-conserving protocols whose transformation error, quantified by trace distance, decays super-polynomially with the number of system copies. As an application, we demonstrate universal work extraction: asymptotically optimal work can be extracted without microscopic knowledge of the initial state, with a super-polynomially small error. Our results show that thermodynamic state transformations remain achievable under limited prior information and establish a universal framework for resource-theoretic thermodynamics beyond the state-aware setting.
Evaluating the maximum amount of work extractable from a nanoscale quantum system is one of the central problems in quantum thermodynamics. Previous works identified the free energy of the input state as the optimal rate of extractable work under the crucial assumption: experimenters know the description of the given quantum state, which restricts the applicability to significantly limited settings. Here, we show that this optimal extractable work can be achieved without knowing the input states at all, removing the aforementioned fundamental operational restrictions. We achieve this by presenting the construction of a quantum channel whose description does not depend on input states but nevertheless extracts work quantified by the free energy of the unknown input state. Remarkably, our result partially encompasses the case of infinite-dimensional systems, for which optimal extractable work has not been known even for the standard state-aware setting. Our results clarify that, even though whether the description of the given state is provided at the beginning of the protocol generally makes the operational setting fundamentally different in accomplishing information-theoretic tasks, not knowing the input state does not influence the optimal performance of the asymptotic work extraction. The maximum work extracted from independent and identically distributed quantum states is characterised only in the state-aware scenario, and it remains unknown with no prior knowledge of the state. Here, the authors show that optimal work extraction can be achieved by a single operation, referred as universal work extraction.
Understanding whether uniquely quantum features can provide concrete advantages in thermodynamic processes is a central objective of quantum thermodynamics. A key challenge is quantifying how different forms of non-classicality can be systematically harnessed to enhance thermodynamic tasks. In light of this, we prove that any form of non-classicality can serve as a thermodynamic resource. In particular, any system that possesses quantum magic, coherence, or non-classical correlations can be leveraged to extract higher amounts of work than if the system does not possess such resources. The quantum thermodynamic advantages--quantified by the ratio between work extractable from a resource state and work extractable in its absence--increase with the resource robustness. We show that for any convex quantum resource theory, any resourceful state can yield a work-extraction advantage over all free states via a cyclic quench/thermalization protocol whose Hamiltonian is engineered from an optimal robustness witness. We illustrate concrete examples in which the robustness measures increase with the system's dimension, yielding quantum thermodynamic advantages that scale with it. In contrast, we also show that preparing a resource state (e.g., one with magic, coherence, or non-classical correlations) can be significantly more thermodynamically costly than preparing any state without such a resource. Concretely, there always exists a protocol that can prepare any non-resourceful state at significantly less work than it takes to prepare a resourceful state. Overall, our results provide operational meaning to robustness measures of quantum resources in terms of their thermodynamic costs and advantages.
Information processing, quantum or classical, relies on channels transforming multiple input states to different corresponding outputs. Previous research has established bounds on the thermodynamic resources required for such operations, but no protocols have been specified for their optimal implementation. For the insightful case of qubits, we here develop explicit protocols to transform two states in an energetically optimal manner. We first prove conditions on the feasibility of carrying out such transformations at all, and then quantify the achievable work extraction. Our results uncover a fundamental incompatibility between the thermodynamic ideal of slow, quasistatic processes and the information-theoretic requirement to preserve distinguishability between different possible output states. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We introduce the resource-theoretic free energy of a quantum channel as the maximal work extractable from the channel as its output equilibrates to a thermal state and its reference system remains locally intact. It is proportional to the relative entropy between the given channel and the absolutely thermal channel. It attains a clear operational meaning as twice the asymptotic rates of athermality distillation and formation under Gibbs-preserving superchannels, which map one absolutely thermal channel to another for a given bath, thereby revealing the asymptotic reversibility of the resource theory of athermality for quantum channels. Consequently, we establish that the optimal extractable work in converting one channel to another through the asymptotic athermality distillation and formation tasks equals the difference in their free energies. We call this optimal work the thermodynamic work capacity of channel conversion. Quantum information processing and computing fundamentally concern the manipulation and transformation of quantum channels, which encompass quantum states, their transformations, and measurements. A quantitative characterization of the optimal thermodynamic work gain or expenditure in quantum information processing constitutes a key step toward formulating thermodynamics of quantum processes.
Quantum complexity measures the difficulty of realizing a quantum process, such as preparing a state or implementing a unitary. We present an approach to quantifying the thermodynamic resources required to implement a process if the process’s complexity is restricted. We focus on the prototypical task of information erasure, or Landauer erasure, wherein an n -qubit memory is reset to the all-zero state. We show that the minimum thermodynamic work required to reset an arbitrary state in our model, via a complexity-constrained process, is quantified by the state’s . The complexity entropy therefore quantifies a trade-off between the work cost and complexity cost of resetting a state. If the qubits have a nontrivial (but product) Hamiltonian, the optimal work cost is determined by the . The complexity entropy quantifies the amount of randomness a system appears to have to a computationally limited observer. Similarly, the complexity relative entropy quantifies such an observer’s ability to distinguish two states. We prove elementary properties of the complexity (relative) entropy. In a random circuit—a simple model for quantum chaotic dynamics—the complexity entropy transitions from zero to its maximal value around the time corresponding to the observer’s computational-power limit. Also, we identify information-theoretic applications of the complexity entropy. The complexity entropy quantifies the resources required for data compression if the compression algorithm must use a restricted number of gates. We further introduce a , which arises naturally in a complexity-constrained variant of information-theoretic decoupling. Assuming that this entropy obeys a conjectured chain rule, we show that the entropy bounds the number of qubits that one can decouple from a reference system, as judged by a computationally bounded referee. Overall, our framework extends the resource-theoretic approach to thermodynamics to integrate a notion of , as quantified by .