Two papers investigate the thermodynamics of quantum systems
Monday, July 8, 2013 - 09:30
in Physics & Chemistry
(Phys.org) —As one of the pillars of the natural sciences, thermodynamics plays an important role in all processes that involve heat, energy, and work. While the principles of thermodynamics can predict the amount of work done in classical systems, for quantum systems there is instead a distribution of many possible values of work. Two new papers published in Physical Review Letters have proposed theoretical schemes that would significantly ease the measurement of the statistics of work done by quantum systems.