2007/01/17 by Ryoichi Kawai, R. Kawai, J. M. R. Parrondo +2 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Quantum many-body systems #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.98.080602
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 (2007), 080602 · 4 pages, 3 figures (4 figure files), accepted for PRL
arxiv created 2007/01/17 · openalex publication_date 2007/02/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We show, through a refinement of the work theorem, that the average dissipation, upon perturbing a Hamiltonian system arbitrarily far out of equilibrium in a transition between two canonical equilibrium states, is exactly given by ⟨Wdiss⟩=⟨W⟩\ensuremath-\ensuremathΔF=kTD(\ensuremathρ\ensuremath∥\stackrel\texttildelow\ensuremathρ)=kT⟨ln(\ensuremathρ/\stackrel\texttildelow\ensuremathρ)⟩, where \ensuremathρ and \stackrel\texttildelow\ensuremathρ are the phase-space density of the system measured at the same intermediate but otherwise arbitrary point in time, for the forward and backward process. D(\ensuremathρ\ensuremath∥\stackrel\texttildelow\ensuremathρ) is the relative entropy of \ensuremathρ versus \stackrel\texttildelow\ensuremathρ. This result also implies general inequalities, which are significantly more accurate than the second law and include, as a special case, the celebrated Landauer principle on the dissipation involved in irreversible computations.