Quantum Institute: Visitor Schedule

The Quantum Lunch is regularly held on Thursdays in the Theoretical Division Conference Room, TA-3, Building 123, Room 121.
For more information, contact Diego Dalvit.

Thursday, October 16, 2008
12:30 PM to 2 PM

Speaker: Haitao Quan, T-DO

TOPIC: Microscopic Work Distribution of Small Systems in Quantum Isothermal Processes and the Minimum Work Principle

Abstract
For a two-level quantum mechanical system, we derive microscopically the exact expression for the fluctuation of microscopic work in a multistep non-equilibrium process, and we rigorously prove that in an isothermal process, the fluctuation is vanishingly small, and the most probabilistic work is just equal to the difference of the free energy. Our study demonstrates that the convergence of the microscopic work in the isothermal process is due to the nature of the isothermal process rather than the usual thermodynamic limit condition. Our investigation justifies the validity of a ``minimum work principle" formulation of the second law even for a small system far from the thermodynamic limit.