Thermodynamics of quantum systems with multiple conserved quantities

Yelena Guryanova, Sandu Popescu (), Anthony J. Short, Ralph Silva and Paul Skrzypczyk
Additional contact information
Yelena Guryanova: H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol
Sandu Popescu: H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol
Anthony J. Short: H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol
Ralph Silva: H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol
Paul Skrzypczyk: H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Recently, there has been much progress in understanding the thermodynamics of quantum systems, even for small individual systems. Most of this work has focused on the standard case where energy is the only conserved quantity. Here we consider a generalization of this work to deal with multiple conserved quantities. Each conserved quantity, which, importantly, need not commute with the rest, can be extracted and stored in its own battery. Unlike the standard case, in which the amount of extractable energy is constrained, here there is no limit on how much of any individual conserved quantity can be extracted. However, other conserved quantities must be supplied, and the second law constrains the combination of extractable quantities and the trade-offs between them. We present explicit protocols that allow us to perform arbitrarily good trade-offs and extract arbitrarily good combinations of conserved quantities from individual quantum systems.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12049 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:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12049

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

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12049

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 ().