Reversing the direction of heat flow using quantum correlations

Kaonan Micadei, John P. S. Peterson, Alexandre M. Souza, Roberto S. Sarthour, Ivan S. Oliveira, Gabriel T. Landi, Tiago B. Batalhão, Roberto M. Serra () and Eric Lutz
Additional contact information
Kaonan Micadei: Universidade Federal do ABC
John P. S. Peterson: Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas
Alexandre M. Souza: Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas
Roberto S. Sarthour: Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas
Ivan S. Oliveira: Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas
Gabriel T. Landi: Universidade de São Paulo
Tiago B. Batalhão: Singapore University of Technology and Design
Roberto M. Serra: Universidade Federal do ABC
Eric Lutz: University of Stuttgart

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Heat spontaneously flows from hot to cold in standard thermodynamics. However, the latter theory presupposes the absence of initial correlations between interacting systems. We here experimentally demonstrate the reversal of heat flow for two quantum correlated spins-1/2, initially prepared in local thermal states at different effective temperatures, employing a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance setup. We observe a spontaneous energy flow from the cold to the hot system. This process is enabled by a trade off between correlations and entropy that we quantify with information-theoretical quantities. These results highlight the subtle interplay of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and information theory. They further provide a mechanism to control heat on the microscale.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10333-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-10333-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10333-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().