Global passivity in microscopic thermodynamics

The main thread that links classical thermodynamics and the thermodynamics of small quantum systems is the celebrated Clausius inequality form of the second law. However, its application to small quantum systems suffers from two cardinal problems: (i) The Clausius inequality does not hold when the system and environment are initially correlated - a commonly encountered scenario in microscopic setups. (ii) In some other cases, the Clausius inequality does not provide any useful information (e.g. in dephasing scenarios). We address these deficiencies by developing the notion of global passivity and employing it as a tool for deriving thermodynamic inequalities on observables. For initially uncorrelated thermal environments the global passivity framework recovers the Clausius inequality. More generally, global passivity provides an extension of the Clausius inequality that holds even in the presences of strong initial system-environment correlations. Crucially, the present framework provides additional thermodynamic bounds on expectation values. To illustrate the role of the additional bounds we use them to detect unaccounted heat leaks and weak feedback operations ("Maxwell's demons") that the Clausius inequality cannot detect. In addition, it is shown that global passivity can put practical upper and lower bounds on the buildup of system-environment correlation for dephasing interactions. Our findings are highly relevant for experiments in various systems such as ion traps, superconducting circuits, atoms in optical cavities and more.Comment: Accepted to Phy. Rev.

Localized Perturbations of Integrable Systems

The statistics of energy levels of a rectangular billiard, that is perturbed by a strong localized potential, are studied analytically and numerically, when this perturbation is at the center or at a typical position. Different results are found for these two types of positions. If the scatterer is at the center, the symmetry leads to additional contributions, some of them are related to the angular dependence of the potential. The limit of the $\delta$-like scatterer is obtained explicitly. The form factor, that is the Fourier transform of the energy-energy correlation function, is calculated analytically, in the framework of the semiclassical geometrical theory of diffraction, and numerically. Contributions of classical orbits that are non diagonal are calculated and are found to be essential.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

An integral fluctuation theorem for systems with unidirectional transitions

The fluctuations of a Markovian jump process with one or more unidirectional transitions, where $R_{ij} >0$ but $R_{ji} =0$, are studied. We find that such systems satisfy an integral fluctuation theorem. The fluctuating quantity satisfying the theorem is a sum of the entropy produced in the bidirectional transitions and a dynamical contribution which depends on the residence times in the states connected by the unidirectional transitions. The convergence of the integral fluctuation theorem is studied numerically, and found to show the same qualitative features as in systems exhibiting microreversibility.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Universal parametric correlations in the classical limit of quantum transport

Quantum corrections to transport through a chaotic ballistic cavity are known to be universal. The universality not only applies to the magnitude of quantum corrections, but also to their dependence on external parameters, such as the Fermi energy or an applied magnetic field. Here we consider such parameter dependence of quantum transport in a ballistic chaotic cavity in the semiclassical limit obtained by sending Planck's constant to zero without changing the classical dynamics of the open cavity. In this limit quantum corrections are shown to have a universal parametric dependence which is not described by random matrix theory.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure