2014/09/30 by Zongping Gong, Sebastian Deffner, H. T. Quan
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Boson #Eigenvalues and eigenvectors #Fermion #Harmonic oscillator #Identical particles #Particle in a box #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum harmonic oscillator #Quantum mechanics #Quantum number #Quantum thermodynamics #Statistical physics #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies #Work (physics) #cond-mat.quant-gas #cond-mat.stat-mech #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.90.062121
published as Physical Review E 90, 062121 (2014) · 17 pages, 9 figures; published version
arxiv created 2014/12/10 · openalex publication_date 2014/12/15 · arxiv updated 2014/12/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Quantum-mechanical particles in a confining potential interfere with each other while undergoing thermodynamic processes far from thermal equilibrium. By evaluating the corresponding transition probabilities between many-particle eigenstates we obtain the quantum work distribution function for identical bosons and fermions, which we compare with the case of distinguishable particles. We find that the quantum work distributions for bosons and fermions significantly differ at low temperatures, while, as expected, at high temperatures the work distributions converge to the classical expression. These findings are illustrated with two analytically solvable examples, namely the time-dependent infinite square well and the parametric harmonic oscillator.