Entropy production in the mesoscopic-leads formulation of quantum thermodynamics
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2023
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| _version_ | 1866929476961566720 |
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| author | Lacerda, Artur M. Kewming, Michael J. Brenes, Marlon Jackson, Conor Clark, Stephen R. Mitchison, Mark T. Goold, John |
| author_facet | Lacerda, Artur M. Kewming, Michael J. Brenes, Marlon Jackson, Conor Clark, Stephen R. Mitchison, Mark T. Goold, John |
| contents | Understanding the entropy production of systems strongly coupled to thermal baths is a core problem of both quantum thermodynamics and mesoscopic physics. While there exist many techniques to accurately study entropy production in such systems, they typically require a microscopic description of the baths, which can become numerically intractable to study for large systems. Alternatively an open-systems approach can be employed with all the nuances associated with various levels of approximation. Recently, the mesoscopic leads approach has emerged as a powerful method for studying such quantum systems strongly coupled to multiple thermal baths. In this method, a set of discretised lead modes, each locally damped, provide a Markovian embedding. Here we show that this method proves extremely useful to describe entropy production of a strongly coupled open quantum system. We show numerically, for both non-interacting and interacting setups, that a system coupled to a single bath exhibits a thermal fixed point at the level of the embedding. This allows us to use various results from the thermodynamics of quantum dynamical semi-groups to infer the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of the strongly coupled, non-Markovian central systems. In particular, we show that the entropy production in the transient regime recovers the well established microscopic definitions of entropy production with a correction that can be computed explicitly for both the single- and multiple-lead cases. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_12513 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Entropy production in the mesoscopic-leads formulation of quantum thermodynamics Lacerda, Artur M. Kewming, Michael J. Brenes, Marlon Jackson, Conor Clark, Stephen R. Mitchison, Mark T. Goold, John Quantum Physics Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Statistical Mechanics Understanding the entropy production of systems strongly coupled to thermal baths is a core problem of both quantum thermodynamics and mesoscopic physics. While there exist many techniques to accurately study entropy production in such systems, they typically require a microscopic description of the baths, which can become numerically intractable to study for large systems. Alternatively an open-systems approach can be employed with all the nuances associated with various levels of approximation. Recently, the mesoscopic leads approach has emerged as a powerful method for studying such quantum systems strongly coupled to multiple thermal baths. In this method, a set of discretised lead modes, each locally damped, provide a Markovian embedding. Here we show that this method proves extremely useful to describe entropy production of a strongly coupled open quantum system. We show numerically, for both non-interacting and interacting setups, that a system coupled to a single bath exhibits a thermal fixed point at the level of the embedding. This allows us to use various results from the thermodynamics of quantum dynamical semi-groups to infer the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of the strongly coupled, non-Markovian central systems. In particular, we show that the entropy production in the transient regime recovers the well established microscopic definitions of entropy production with a correction that can be computed explicitly for both the single- and multiple-lead cases. |
| title | Entropy production in the mesoscopic-leads formulation of quantum thermodynamics |
| topic | Quantum Physics Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Statistical Mechanics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.12513 |