2019/02/01 by Zhaoyu Fei, Jing-Ning Zhang, Rui Pan +2
Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Annihilation #Canonical ensemble #Casimir effect #Classical mechanics #Electromagnetic field #Field (mathematics) #Grand canonical ensemble #Limit (mathematics) #Mathematical analysis #Mathematics #Non-equilibrium thermodynamics #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum mechanics #Resonance (particle physics) #Statistical physics #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies #Work (physics) #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.99.052508
published as Phys. Rev. A 99, 052508 (2019) · 14 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2019/02/01 · openalex publication_date 2019/05/15 · arxiv updated 2019/05/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the joint probability distribution function of the work and the change of photon number of the nonequilibrium process of driving the electromagnetic (EM) field in a three-dimensional cavity with an oscillating boundary. The system is initially prepared in a grand-canonical equilibrium state and we obtain the analytical expressions of the characteristic functions of work distributions in the single-resonance and multiple-resonance conditions. Our study demonstrates the validity of the fluctuation theorems of the grand-canonical ensemble in nonequilibrium processes with particle creation and annihilation. In addition, our work illustrates that, in the high-temperature limit, the work done on the quantized EM field approaches its classical counterpart, while in the low-temperature limit, similar to Casimir effect, it differs significantly from its classical counterpart.