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Main Authors: Seegebrecht, Anja, Schilling, Tanja
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00091
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author Seegebrecht, Anja
Schilling, Tanja
author_facet Seegebrecht, Anja
Schilling, Tanja
contents Recently, the concept of minimal dissipation has been brought forward as a means to define work performed on open quantum systems [Phys. Rev. A 105, 052216 (2022)]. We discuss this concept from the point of view of projection operator formalisms in classical statistical physics. We analyse an autonomous composite system which consists of a system and an environment in the most general sense (i.e. we neither impose conditions on the coupling between system and environment nor on the properties of the environment). One condition any useful definition of work needs to fulfill is that it reproduces the thermodynamic notion of work in the limit of weak coupling to an environment that has infinite heat capacity. We propose a projection operator route to a definition of work that reaches this limit and we discuss its relation to minimal dissipation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_00091
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The concept of minimal dissipation and the identification of work in autonomous systems: A view from classical statistical physics
Seegebrecht, Anja
Schilling, Tanja
Quantum Physics
Recently, the concept of minimal dissipation has been brought forward as a means to define work performed on open quantum systems [Phys. Rev. A 105, 052216 (2022)]. We discuss this concept from the point of view of projection operator formalisms in classical statistical physics. We analyse an autonomous composite system which consists of a system and an environment in the most general sense (i.e. we neither impose conditions on the coupling between system and environment nor on the properties of the environment). One condition any useful definition of work needs to fulfill is that it reproduces the thermodynamic notion of work in the limit of weak coupling to an environment that has infinite heat capacity. We propose a projection operator route to a definition of work that reaches this limit and we discuss its relation to minimal dissipation.
title The concept of minimal dissipation and the identification of work in autonomous systems: A view from classical statistical physics
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00091