Entering the deep QuAntum Regimes of NOnequilibrium Thermodynamics

Introduction

Can we extend nonequilibrium thermodynamics to probe complex quantum phenomena?

In the 90s, the scope of thermodynamics broadened to include small systems and far-from-equilibrium transformations. Building on these advances, the emerging field of quantum thermodynamics has recently led to breakthroughs formulating nonequilibrium thermodynamics in the quantum regime.

Motivations

Motivations for this research range from:

1. The search for quantum advantages in heat engines or quantum batteries.
2. The expression of global constraints on many-body quantum dynamics stemming from the Second Law.

However, deep quantum regimes where the largest deviations from classical thermodynamics are expected remain elusive, limiting applications.

Challenges

At weak system-reservoir coupling, a finer description of the coherent-dissipative regime is lacking. This gap hinders the ability to:

• Evaluate the resource costs of quantum control.
• Optimize quantum heat engines.
• Understand the energy transfers during a quantum measurement.

This, in turn, hinders experimental developments of quantum thermodynamics across more platforms. To express fundamental nonequilibrium bounds on the energy exchanges with quantum materials and use thermodynamics to probe many-body dynamics, new coarse-grained descriptions are crucially needed.

Project Overview

Project QARNOT will address these timely issues owing to a novel strategy that combines:

• Cutting-edge methods from quantum open system theory beyond the most common approximations.
• Newly-derived universal thermodynamic descriptions of quantum systems.

This approach aims to bridge the gap between quantum thermodynamic laws and experimentally or theoretically accessible physical variables.

Expected Outcomes

By unlocking the deep quantum regimes of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, QARNOT will provide a new versatile analytical toolbox to probe quantum many-body and dissipative dynamics. Notably, QARNOT’s advances will be employed to solve the important bottleneck of the thermodynamic description of realistic quantum measurement, enabling a broad experimental use of thermodynamic concepts.