2023/02/16 by Owen Diba, Harry J. D. Miller, Diba, Owen +5 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · Computer Science · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #Quantum Information and Cryptography
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2302.08395
Determining the statistics of work done on a quantum system while strongly coupled to a reservoir is a formidable task, requiring the calculation of the full eigenspectrum of the combined system and reservoir. Here we show that this issue can be circumvented by using a polaron transformation that maps the system into a new frame where weak-coupling theory can be applied. Crucially, this polaron approach reproduces the Jarzynski fluctuation theorem, thus ensuring consistency with the laws of stochastic thermodynamics. We apply our formalism to a system driven across the Landau-Zener transition, where we identify clear signatures in the work distribution arising from a non-negligible coupling to the environment. Our results provide a new method for studying the stochastic thermodynamics of driven quantum systems beyond Markovian, weak-coupling regimes.