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Title: Non-hermitian quantum thermodynamics

Journal Article · · Scientific Reports
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/srep23408· OSTI ID:1255150
 [1];  [2];  [2]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Univ. of Silesia, Katowice (Poland)
  2. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Thermodynamics is the phenomenological theory of heat and work. Here we analyze to what extent quantum thermodynamic relations are immune to the underlying mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. As a main result, we show that the Jarzynski equality holds true for all non-hermitian quantum systems with real spectrum. This equality expresses the second law of thermodynamics for isothermal processes arbitrarily far from equilibrium. In the quasistatic limit however, the second law leads to the Carnot bound which is fulfilled even if some eigenenergies are complex provided they appear in conjugate pairs. Lastly, we propose two setups to test our predictions, namely with strongly interacting excitons and photons in a semiconductor microcavity and in the non-hermitian tight-binding model.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
1255150
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-15-29023; srep23408
Journal Information:
Scientific Reports, Vol. 6; ISSN 2045-2322
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 50 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (26)

Jarzynski Equality for Driven Quantum Field Theories journal February 2018
Loschmidt Echo and Fidelity Decay Near an Exceptional Point journal June 2019
Non-Thermal Quantum Engine in Transmon Qubits journal May 2019
Quantum work and the thermodynamic cost of quantum measurements text January 2016
Non-Hermitian heat engine with all-quantum-adiabatic-process cycle journal October 2016
Fluctuation Theorems for a Quantum Channel journal August 2019
Time-dependent PT -symmetric quantum mechanics in generic non-Hermitian systems journal December 2019
Non-thermal quantum engine in transmon qubits collection January 2018
Quantum Work Relations and Response Theory in $\mathcal{PT}$-Symmetric Quantum Systems text January 2017
Linear Quantum Entropy and Non-Hermitian Hamiltonians text January 2016
Quantum and Information Thermodynamics: A Unifying Framework based on Repeated Interactions text January 2016
Quantum Dynamics of Skyrmions in Chiral Magnets text January 2017
Beyond the spectral theorem: Spectrally decomposing arbitrary functions of nondiagonalizable operators journal June 2018
Dynamics of finite dimensional non-hermitian systems with indefinite metric text January 2018
Beyond the Spectral Theorem: Spectrally Decomposing Arbitrary Functions of Nondiagonalizable Operators preprint January 2016
Non-thermal quantum engine in transmon qubits text January 2018
Jarzynski Equality for Driven Quantum Field Theories text January 2017
Dynamics of finite dimensional non-hermitian systems with indefinite metric journal January 2019
Enhancing and protecting quantum correlations of a two-qubit entangled system via non-Hermitian operation journal July 2018
Loschmidt echo and fidelity decay near an exceptional point text January 2019
Quantum fluctuation theorem for error diagnostics in quantum annealers journal November 2018
Information scrambling vs. decoherence -- two competing sinks for entropy text January 2020
Time-Rescaling of Dirac Dynamics: Shortcuts to Adiabaticity in Ion Traps and Weyl Semimetals journal January 2021
Time reversal of a discrete system coupled to a continuum based on non-Hermitian flip journal June 2017
Quantum speed limits: from Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to optimal quantum control journal October 2017
Quantum speed limits: from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to optimal quantum control text January 2017

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