Correlations in quantum thermodynamics: Heat, work, and entropy production
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Published on: March 4, 2017
S Alipour1,2, F Benatti3,4, F Bakhshinezhad2
1School of Nano Science, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran 19538, Iran.
Abstract:
We provide a characterization of energy in the form of exchanged heat and work between two interacting constituents of a closed, bipartite, correlated quantum system. By defining a binding energy we derive a consistent quantum formulation of the first law of thermodynamics, in which the role of correlations becomes evident, and this formulation reduces to the standard classical picture in relevant systems. We next discuss the emergence of the second law of thermodynamics under certain-but fairly general-conditions such as the Markovian assumption. We illustrate the role of correlations and interactions in thermodynamics through two examples.
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