Second law of thermodynamics for heat exchanged between quantum systems

What is it about?

Generalizing statements of the second law of thermodynamics to account for quantum effects is notoriously hard. The major issue arises from understanding how thermodynamic quantities such as work and heat are measured. In this work we generalized one of the most important statements of the second law for heat exchange between two quantum systems, i.e., the exchange fluctuation theorem, to a novel measurement paradigm -- the one-time measurement scheme. As a main result we obtained a conceptually consistent, experimentally relevant, and even tighter version of Clausius's inequality for heat exchange.

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Photo by kris on Unsplash

Photo by kris on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our results are conceptually interesting, and also practically important. The one-time measurement version of the exchange fluctuation theorem provides a pathway to experimental exploration of heat exchange in fully quantum systems.