A complete thermodynamic analysis of a quantum measurement process necessitates a method for obtaining higher moments of thermodynamic quantities, such as work, heat, and entropy production. While such a method is provided by the eigenstate trajectory approach of stochastic quantum thermodynamics, conceptual difficulties are encountered when the quantum system being measured is degenerate; an infinite possibility of eigen-decompositions of the quantum state results in infinitely many sets of eigenstate trajectories, thereby precluding the unique assignment of higher moments in general. In the present manuscript we provide a solution to this problem for the case of ideal projective measurements, by ``coarse-graining'' the eigenstate trajectories, and modifying the definition of stochastic energy change. We show that the resulting statistics of work, heat, and entropy production are always uniquely defined, and reduce to those given by the eigenstate trajectory method when the latter does not result in ambiguities. Our proposed methodology thus paves the way towards a novel approach for studying the thermodynamic properties of degenerate quantum systems.
A complete thermodynamic analysis of a quantum measurement process necessitates a method for obtaining higher moments of thermodynamic quantities, such as work, heat, and entropy production. While such a method is provided by the eigenstate trajectory approach of stochastic quantum thermodynamics, conceptual difficulties are encountered when the quantum system being measured is degenerate; an infinite possibility of eigen-decompositions of the quantum state results in infinitely many sets of eigenstate trajectories, thereby precluding the unique assignment of higher moments in general. In the present manuscript we provide a solution to this problem for the case of ideal projective measurements, by ``coarse-graining'' the eigenstate trajectories, and modifying the definition of stochastic energy change. We show that the resulting statistics of work, heat, and entropy production are always uniquely defined, and reduce to those given by the eigenstate trajectory method when the latter does not result in ambiguities. Our proposed methodology thus paves the way towards a novel approach for studying the thermodynamic properties of degenerate quantum systems.
The increase in average energy of a quantum system undergoing projective energy measurements is referred to as "quantum heat", which is always zero. In the framework of quantum stochastic thermodynamics, this is constructed as the average over the fluctuating quantum heat (FQH), defined as the increase in expected value of the Hamiltonian along two-point eigenstate trajectories. However, such a definition has two drawbacks: (i) if the initial state does not commute with the Hamiltonian and has degeneracies, the higher moments of the FQH will not be uniquely defined, and therefore it is arguable whether such a quantity is physically meaningful; (ii) the definition is operationally demanding as it requires full knowledge of the initial state. In the present manuscript we show that the FQH is an instance of conditional increase in energy given sequential measurements, the first of which is with respect to the eigen-decomposition of the initial state. By coarse-graining this initial measurement, first by only distinguishing between degenerate subspaces of the state, and finally by not distinguishing between any subspace at all, we provide two alternative definitions for the FQH, which we call the partially coarse-grained FQH and fully coarse-grained FQH, respectively. The partially coarse-grained FQH resolves issue (i), whereas the fully coarse-grained FQH resolves both (i) and (ii).
We build a framework for the thermodynamics of macroscopic quantum systems. In contrast with approaches requiring access to the full density matrix, our framework relies on a coarse-grained description, based on measurement statistics of a few observables. When these observables commute, the outcomes define classical macrostates whose entropy is quantified by observational entropy, accounting for uncertainty about both the macrostate and the microstate within it. We extend this notion to non-commuting observables forming a subalgebra of the operator space, and use Jaynes' principle to define an algebra-dependent entropy interpolating between von Neumann and observational entropies. Given initial and final measurement sets, connected by internal and/or environment-induced dynamics, we derive a second law for the coarse-grained dynamics. Unlike formulations based on von Neumann entropy, our inequality captures irreversibility from both non-unitary environment-induced dynamics and internal equilibration. It takes the usual form of a positive entropy production when the system is initially at internal equilibrium, while correction terms capture nonequilibrium resources ignored by the coarse-graining. We also derive fluctuation theorems for coarse-grained thermodynamic quantities. Along a quasi-static path of measurement schemes, we identify quantum macroscopic notions of work and heat fulfilling the first and second laws, including an additional work contribution from manipulating the algebra to which the system is confined, through external constraints or quantum measurement backaction. Finally, we apply our framework to examples illustrating the impact of varying the coarse-graining scheme. Our approach unifies macroscopic and stochastic thermodynamics in a genuinely quantum framework, laying the basis for a versatile, experimentally friendly toolbox to analyze complex quantum dynamics.
Operational quantum stochastic thermodynamics is a recently proposed theory to study the thermodynamics of open systems based on the rigorous notion of a quantum stochastic process or quantum causal model. In there, a stochastic trajectory is defined solely in terms of experimentally accessible measurement results, which serve as the basis to define the corresponding thermodynamic quantities. In contrast to this observer-dependent point of view, a `black box', which evolves unitarily and can simulate a quantum causal model, is constructed here. The quantum thermodynamics of this big isolated system can then be studied using widely accepted arguments from statistical mechanics. It is shown that the resulting definitions of internal energy, heat, work, and entropy have a natural extension to the trajectory level. The canonical choice of them coincides with the proclaimed definitions of operational quantum stochastic thermodynamics, thereby providing strong support in favour of that novel framework. However, a few remaining ambiguities in the definition of stochastic work and heat are also discovered and in light of these findings some other proposals are reconsidered. Finally, it is demonstrated that the first and second law hold for an even wider range of scenarios than previously thought, covering a large class of quantum causal models based solely on a single assumption about the initial system-bath state.
We investigate fundamental connections between thermodynamics and quantum information theory. First, we show that the operational framework of thermal operations is nonequivalent to the framework of Gibbs-preserving maps, and we comment on this gap. We then introduce a fully information-theoretic framework generalizing the above by making further abstraction of physical quantities such as energy. It is technically convenient to work with and reproduces known results for finite-size quantum thermodynamics. With our framework we may determine the minimal work cost of implementing any logical process. In the case of information processing on memory registers with a degenerate Hamiltonian, the answer is given by the max-entropy, a measure of information known from quantum information theory. In the general case, we obtain a new information measure, the "coherent relative entropy", which generalizes both the conditional entropy and the relative entropy. It satisfies a collection of properties which justifies its interpretation as an entropy measure and which connects it to known quantities. We then present how, from our framework, macroscopic thermodynamics emerges by typicality, after singling out an appropriate class of thermodynamic states possessing some suitable reversibility property. A natural thermodynamic potential emerges, dictating possible state transformations, and whose differential describes the physics of the system. The textbook thermodynamics of a gas is recovered as well as the form of the second law relating thermodynamic entropy and heat exchange. Finally, noting that quantum states are relative to the observer, we see that the procedure above gives rise to a natural form of coarse-graining in quantum mechanics: Each observer can consistently apply the formalism of quantum information according to their own fundamental unit of information.
In both classical and quantum thermodynamics, physical quantities are typically assigned objective values defined independently of our observations. We then refer to the “work performed by a gas,” or the “entropy of the gas,” regardless of how they are evaluated. Here, we question this conception in the context of quantum thermodynamics, estimating how the definition of pivotal thermodynamic quantities is affected by experimental instruments of limited precision. We find that the coarse-grained thermodynamic quantities frequently lead to different conclusions from those drawn in fine-grained scenarios. For instance, the irreversibility of a process, or its work payoff, can significantly vary with the instrument precision. We show nonetheless that coarse-grained thermodynamic quantities satisfy the relations (i.e., the second law inequality, the relation between dissipation and distinguishability of a process from its time reverse, and the quantum work fluctuation theorems) as their fine-grained counterparts. These results highlight the observation independence of relations linking thermodynamic quantities, which are themselves observation dependent.
We extend classical coarse-grained entropy, commonly used in many branches of physics, to the quantum realm. We find two coarse grainings, one using measurements of local particle numbers and then total energy, and the second using local energy measurements, which lead to an entropy that is defined outside of equilibrium, is in accord with the thermodynamic entropy for equilibrium systems, and reaches the thermodynamic entropy in the long-time limit, even in genuinely isolated quantum systems. This answers the long-standing conceptual problem, as to which entropy is relevant for the formulation of the second thermodynamic law in closed quantum systems. This entropy could be in principle measured, especially now that experiments on such systems are becoming feasible.