Abstract
The second law of classical equilibrium thermodynamics, based on the positivity of entropy production, asserts that any process occurs only in a direction that some information may be lost (flow out of the system) due to the irreversibility inside the system. However, any thermodynamic system can exhibit fluctuations in which negative entropy production may be observed. In particular, in stochastic quantum processes due to quantum correlations and also memory effects we may see the reversal energy flow (heat flow from the cold system to the hot system) and the backflow of information into the system that leads to the negativity of the entropy production which is an apparent violation of the Second Law. In order to resolve this apparent violation, we will try to properly extend the Second Law to quantum processes by incorporating information explicitly into the Second Law. We will also provide a thermodynamic operational meaning for the flow and backflow of information. Finally, it is shown that negative and positive entropy production can be described by a quantum thermodynamic force.
Highlights
The second law of classical equilibrium thermodynamics, based on the positivity of entropy production, asserts that any process occurs only in a direction that some information may be lost (flow out of the system) due to the irreversibility inside the system
In the following we focus our attention 1 on two special cases to elucidate the physical meaning of the relation Wirr = β iS in non-equilibrium quantum thermodynamics: (a) Consider a reversible cycle with a quantum engine operating between two heat reservoirs at temperatures Th and Tc with Th > Tc
In this work we have appropriately divided the work done by a thermodynamic system into two parts: reversible work and irreversible work
Summary
The second law of classical equilibrium thermodynamics, based on the positivity of entropy production, asserts that any process occurs only in a direction that some information may be lost (flow out of the system) due to the irreversibility inside the system. If the entropy production is positive, iS ≥ 0 , the generalized minimal work formulation (the generalized second law) for an isothermal process with given initial and final non-equilibrium distributions is obtained as
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