A note on reflectionless Jacobi matrices

The property that a Jacobi matrix is reflectionless is usually characterized either in terms of Weyl m-functions or the vanishing of the real part of the boundary values of the diagonal matrix elements of the resolvent. We introduce a characterization in terms of stationary scattering theory (the vanishing of the reflection coefficients) and prove that this characterization is equivalent to the usual ones. We also show that the new characterization is equivalent to the notion of being dynamically reflectionless, thus providing a short proof of an important result of [Breuer-Ryckman-Simon]. The motivation for the new characterization comes from recent studies of the non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of the electronic black box model and we elaborate on this connection. To appear in Commun. Math. Phys.Comment: 10 page

Entropic fluctuations in thermally driven harmonic networks

We consider a general network of harmonic oscillators driven out of thermal equilibrium by coupling to several heat reservoirs at different temperatures. The action of the reservoirs is implemented by Langevin forces. Assuming the existence and uniqueness of the steady state of the resulting process, we construct a canonical entropy production functional which satisfies the Gallavotti--Cohen fluctuation theorem, i.e., a global large deviation principle with a rate function I(s) obeying the Gallavotti--Cohen fluctuation relation I(-s)-I(s)=s for all s. We also consider perturbations of our functional by quadratic boundary terms and prove that they satisfy extended fluctuation relations, i.e., a global large deviation principle with a rate function that typically differs from I(s) outside a finite interval. This applies to various physically relevant functionals and, in particular, to the heat dissipation rate of the network. Our approach relies on the properties of the maximal solution of a one-parameter family of algebraic matrix Riccati equations. It turns out that the limiting cumulant generating functions of our functional and its perturbations can be computed in terms of spectral data of a Hamiltonian matrix depending on the harmonic potential of the network and the parameters of the Langevin reservoirs. This approach is well adapted to both analytical and numerical investigations

A note on the entropy production formula

International audienceWe give an elementary derivation of the entropy production formula of [http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00005457] based on Araki Perturbation Theory of KMS states. Using this derivation we show that the entropy production of any normal, stationary state is zero

Full statistics of erasure processes: Isothermal adiabatic theory and a statistical Landauer principle

We study driven finite quantum systems in contact with a thermal reservoir in the regime in which the system changes slowly in comparison to the equilibration time. The associated isothermal adiabatic theorem allows us to control the full statistics of energy transfers in quasi-static processes. Within this approach, we extend Landauer's Principle on the energetic cost of erasure processes to the level of the full statistics and elucidate the nature of the fluctuations breaking Landauer's bound.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures; In the new version, Section 4 contains an extended discussion of the violation of Landauer's boun

Energy conservation, counting statistics, and return to equilibrium

We study a microscopic Hamiltonian model describing an N-level quantum system S coupled to an infinitely extended thermal reservoir R. Initially, the system S is in an arbitrary state while the reservoir is in thermal equilibrium at temperature T. Assuming that the coupled system S+R is mixing with respect to the joint thermal equilibrium state, we study the Full Counting Statistics (FCS) of the energy transfers S->R and R->S in the process of return to equilibrium. The first FCS describes the increase of the energy of the system S. It is an atomic probability measure, denoted $P_{S,\lambda,t}$, concentrated on the set of energy differences $\sigma(H_S)-\sigma(H_S)$ ($\sigma(H_S)$ is the spectrum of the Hamiltonian of S, $t$ is the length of the time interval during which the measurement of the energy transfer is performed, and $\lambda$ is the strength of the interaction between S and R). The second FCS, $P_{R,\lambda,t}$, describes the decrease of the energy of the reservoir R and is typically a continuous probability measure whose support is the whole real line. We study the large time limit $t\rightarrow\infty$ of these two measures followed by the weak coupling limit $\lambda\rightarrow 0$ and prove that the limiting measures coincide. This result strengthens the first law of thermodynamics for open quantum systems. The proofs are based on modular theory of operator algebras and on a representation of $P_{R,\lambda,t}$ by quantum transfer operators