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AIP conference proceedings

Quantum heat fluctuation theorem

P. S. Pal, Sourabh Lahiri, A. M. Jayannavar

Published Jan 1, 2017• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Two fundamental ingredients play a decisive role in the foundations of fluctuation relations-the principle of micro-reversibility and the fact that thermal equilibrium is described by Gibbs canonical ensemble. Here we investigate the statistics of heat exchange between quantum finite system coupled to two reservoirs at temperatures Th and Tc in the transient regime. We have obtained an analytical result for quantum heat fluctuation theorem in the transient regime. We consider a composite system consisting of two different heat baths at different temperatures with an intervening medium(system of interest). The system of interest is driven by an external protocol. For our study we invoke von Neumann two point projective measurement in quantum mechanics. Our result is a generalisation of Jarzynski-Wojcik heat fluctuation theorem.

DOI
10.1063/1.4980636

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Two fundamental ingredients play a decisive role in the foundations of fluctuation relations-the principle of micro-reversibility and the fact that thermal equilibrium is described by Gibbs canonical ensemble. Here we investigate the statistics of heat exchange between quantum finite system coupled to two reservoirs at temperatures Th and Tc in the transient regime. We have obtained an analytical result for quantum heat fluctuation theorem in the transient regime. We consider a composite system consisting of two different heat baths at different temperatures with an intervening medium(system of interest). The system of interest is driven by an external protocol. For our study we invoke von Neumann two point projective measurement in quantum mechanics. Our result is a generalisation of Jarzynski-Wojcik heat fluctuation theorem.
We investigate the statistics of heat exchange between a finite system coupled to reservoir(s). We have obtained analytical results for heat fluctuation theorems in the transient regime considering the Hamiltonian dynamics of the composite system consisting of the system of interest and the heat bath(s). The system of interest is driven by an external protocol. We first derive it in the context of a single heat bath. The result is in exact agreement with known result. We then generalize the treatment to two heat baths. We further extend the study to quantum systems and show that relations similar to the classical case hold in the quantum regime. For our study we invoke von Neumann two-point projective measurement in quantum mechanics in the transient regime. The study of quantum systems follows the same lines of argument as that of the classical system, and as a result the treatment used in the latter complements that used in the former. Our result is a generalization of Jarzynski-Wòjcik heat fluctuation theorem.
Nonequilibrium fluctuation relation lies at the heart of the quantum thermodynamics. Many previous studies have demonstrated that the heat exchange between a quantum system and a thermal bath initially prepared in their own Gibbs states at different temperatures obeys the famous Jarzynski-Wójcik fluctuation theorem. However, this conclusion is obtained under the assumption of Born-Markovian approximation. In this paper, going beyond the Born-Markovian limitation, we investigate the statistics of quantum heat in an exactly non-Markovian relaxation process described by the well-known Caldeira-Leggett model. It is revealed that the Jarzynski-Wójcik fluctuation theorem breaks down in the strongly non-Markovian regime. Moreover, we find the steady-state quantum heat within the non-Markovian framework can be widely tunable by using the quantum reservoir-engineering technique. These results are sharply contrary to the common Born-Markovian predictions. Our results presented in this paper may update the understanding of the quantum thermodynamics in strongly coupled and low-temperature systems. Moreover, the controllable heat may have some potential applications in improving the performance of a quantum heat engine.
Abstract The celebrated exchange fluctuation theorem—proposed by Jarzynski and Wójcik (2004 Phys. Rev. Lett. 92 230602) for heat exchange between two systems in thermal equilibrium at different temperatures—is explored here for quantum Gaussian states in thermal equilibrium. We employ the Wigner distribution function formalism for quantum states, which exhibits a close resemblance to the classical phase-space trajectory description, to arrive at a formal Jarzynski–Wójcik result. For two Gaussian states in thermal equilibrium at two different temperatures kept in contact with each other for a fixed duration of time, we show that the Jarzynski–Wójcik- like relation reduces to the corresponding classical result in the limit ℏ → 0.
We study the heat transfer between two finite quantum systems initially at different temperatures. We find that a recently proposed fluctuation theorem for heat exchange, namely the exchange fluctuation theorem [C. Jarzynski and D. K. Wójcik, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 230602 (2004)], does not generally hold in the presence of a finite heat transfer as in the original form proved for weak coupling. As the coupling is weakened, the deviation from the theorem and the heat transfer vanish in the same order of the coupling. We then discover a condition for the exchange fluctuation theorem to hold in the presence of a finite heat transfer, namely the commutable-coupling condition. We explicitly calculate the deviation from the exchange fluctuation theorem as well as the heat transfer for simple models. We confirm for the models that the deviation indeed has a finite value as far as the coupling between the two systems is finite except for the special point of the commutable-coupling condition. We also confirm analytically that the commutable-coupling condition indeed lets the exchange fluctuation theorem hold exactly under a finite heat transfer.
The quantum exchange fluctuation theorem relates the probabilities of observing heat transfer along and against the temperature gradient between thermal baths at different temperatures. We investigate how this relation generalizes when the baths exhibit non-Markovian dynamics. Using a microscopic collisional model, bath memory is generated through interactions between successive bath auxiliaries before each heat-exchange collision. We derive exchange fluctuation theorems for both direct bath-bath interactions and probe-mediated heat exchange in the steady-state regime. As an illustrative example, we consider heat baths with qubit auxiliaries and show that non-Markovian memory enhances the probability of heat-transfer events against the temperature gradient, modifying the predictions made by the conventional Jarzynski-Wójcik exchange fluctuation theorem. Our results establish a microscopic connection between environmental memory and non-equilibrium heat-exchange statistics.
The nonequilibrium fluctuation relation is a cornerstone of quantum thermodynamics. It is widely believed that the system-bath heat exchange obeys the famous Jarzynski-Wójcik fluctuation theorem. However, this theorem is established in the Born-Markovian approximation under the weak-coupling condition. Via studying the energy exchange between a harmonic oscillator and its coupled bath in the non-Markovian dynamics, we establish a generalized quantum fluctuation theorem for energy exchange being valid for arbitrary coupling strength. The Jarzynski-Wójcik fluctuation theorem is recovered in the weak-coupling limit. We also find the average energy exchange exhibits rich nonequilibrium characteristics when different numbers of system-bath bound states are formed, which suggests a useful way to control the quantum heat. Deepening our understanding of the fluctuation relation in quantum thermodynamics, our result lays the foundation to design high-efficiency quantum heat engines.