Beyond heat baths II: Framework for generalized thermodynamic resource theories

Thermodynamics, which describes vast systems, has been reconciled with small scales, relevant to single-molecule experiments, in resource theories. Resource theories have been used to model exchanges of energy and information. Recently, particle exchanges were modeled; and an umbrella family of thermodynamic resource theories was proposed to model diverse baths, interactions, and free energies. This paper motivates and details the family's structure and prospective applications. How to model electrochemical, gravitational, magnetic, and other thermodynamic systems is explained. Szilard's engine and Landauer's Principle are generalized, as resourcefulness is shown to be convertible not only between information and gravitational energy, but also among diverse degrees of freedom. Extensive variables are associated with quantum operators that might fail to commute, introducing extra nonclassicality into thermodynamic resource theories. An early version of this paper partially motivated the later development of noncommutative thermalization. This generalization expands the theories' potential for modeling realistic systems with which small-scale statistical mechanics might be tested experimentally.Comment: Minor updates (contributions clarified, material restored from v1, references updated). 18 pages (including 2 figures) + appendice

Symmetric Laplacians, Quantum Density Matrices and their Von-Neumann Entropy

We show that the (normalized) symmetric Laplacian of a simple graph can be obtained from the partial trace over a pure bipartite quantum state that resides in a bipartite Hilbert space (one part corresponding to the vertices, the other corresponding to the edges). This suggests an interpretation of the symmetric Laplacian's Von Neumann entropy as a measure of bipartite entanglement present between the two parts of the state. We then study extreme values for a connected graph's generalized R\'enyi-$p$ entropy. Specifically, we show that (1) the complete graph achieves maximum entropy, (2) the $2$-regular graph: a) achieves minimum R\'enyi-$2$ entropy among all $k$-regular graphs, b) is within $\log 4/3$ of the minimum R\'enyi-$2$ entropy and $\log4\sqrt{2}/3$ of the minimum Von Neumann entropy among all connected graphs, c) achieves a Von Neumann entropy less than the star graph. Point $(2)$ contrasts sharply with similar work applied to (normalized) combinatorial Laplacians, where it has been shown that the star graph almost always achieves minimum Von Neumann entropy. In this work we find that the star graph achieves maximum entropy in the limit as the number of vertices grows without bound. Keywords: Symmetric; Laplacian; Quantum; Entropy; Bounds; R\'enyi