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Interference of identical particles and the quantum work distribution.
Zongping Gong1, Sebastian Deffner2, H T Quan3
1School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Physical Review. E, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
|January 24, 2015
Summary
Quantum work distributions for identical bosons and fermions differ significantly at low temperatures but converge to classical expressions at high temperatures in confining potentials.
Area of Science:
- Quantum thermodynamics
- Many-body physics
- Statistical mechanics
Background:
- Investigating quantum systems undergoing thermodynamic processes far from equilibrium is crucial for understanding quantum thermodynamics.
- The behavior of quantum particles in confining potentials presents unique challenges and opportunities for theoretical study.
Purpose of the Study:
- To derive and analyze the quantum work distribution function for identical bosons and fermions in a confining potential.
- To compare the quantum work distributions of identical particles with those of distinguishable particles.
- To explore the temperature dependence of quantum work distributions.
Main Methods:
- Evaluation of transition probabilities between many-particle eigenstates.
- Derivation of the quantum work distribution function for bosons and fermions.
- Comparison with the classical work distribution.
Main Results:
- Quantum work distributions for bosons and fermions exhibit significant differences at low temperatures.
- At high temperatures, the work distributions for identical particles converge to the classical expression.
- The study provides analytical solutions for the time-dependent infinite square well and the parametric harmonic oscillator.
Conclusions:
- The quantum nature of particles, specifically their statistics (bosonic or fermionic), profoundly impacts work distributions in non-equilibrium thermodynamic processes.
- Temperature plays a critical role in determining the deviation of quantum work distributions from classical predictions.
- The findings offer insights into the fundamental differences between quantum and classical thermodynamics in interacting many-body systems.
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