Irreversibility and Dissipativity of Quantum Systems

Edgar Revéiz

Édgar Roldán

Chen-Juan Zou, Yue Li, Jiakun Xu +3 more

Irreversible entropy production (IEP) plays an important role in quantum thermodynamic processes. Here, we investigate the geometrical bounds of IEP in nonequilibrium thermodynamics by exemplifying a system coupled to a squeezed thermal bath subject to dissipation and dephasing, respectively. We find that the geometrical bounds of the IEP always shift in a contrary way under dissipation and dephasing, where the lower and upper bounds turning to be tighter occur in the situation of dephasing and dissipation, respectively. However, either under dissipation or under dephasing, we may reduce both the critical time of the IEP itself and the critical time of the bounds for reaching an equilibrium by harvesting the benefits of squeezing effects in which the values of the IEP, quantifying the degree of thermodynamic irreversibility, also become smaller. Therefore, due to the nonequilibrium nature of the squeezed thermal bath, the system-bath interaction energy has a prominent impact on the IEP, leading to tightness of its bounds. Our results are not contradictory with the second law of thermodynamics by involving squeezing of the bath as an available resource, which can improve the performance of quantum thermodynamic devices.

H. J. Korsch, H Steffen

A non-linear evolution equation for the density operator is proposed which models the irreversible dissipative time evolution of a system in contact with its surroundings. Various properties of the proposed equation are discussed. As an illustration the three-state system is studied in detail.

Giulio Casati