Controlling the Entropy of a Single-Molecule Junction

Single molecules are nanoscale thermodynamic systems with few degrees of freedom. Thus, the knowledge of their entropy can reveal the presence of microscopic electron transfer dynamics that are difficult to observe otherwise. Here, we apply thermocurrent spectroscopy to directly measure the entropy of a single free radical molecule in a...

Entropy production in quantum is different

Currently, 'time' does not play any essential role in quantum information theory. In this sense, quantum information theory is underdeveloped similarly to how quantum physics was underdeveloped before Erwin Schrödinger introduced his famous equation for the evolution of a quantum wave function. In this review article, we cope with the problem...

The quantum advantage to charging electron spin qubit batteries

Quantum thermodynamics takes over from classical thermodynamics when systems are of the scale of single particles and quantum fluctuations have a noticeable effect. An interesting topic of research of this relatively new field is the quantum battery, which in this thesis consists of an array of N identical electron spin qubits. In an article by...

A theory of thermodynamics for nanoscale quantum systems

Thermodynamics is one of the main pillars of theoretical physics, and it has a special appeal of having wide applicability to a large variety of different physical systems. However, many assumptions in thermodynamics apply only to systems which are bulk material, i.e. consisting a large number of microscopic classical particles. Due to the...

Surpassing the Carnot efficiency by extracting imperfect work

A suitable way of quantifying work for microscopic quantum systems has been constantly debated in the field of quantum thermodynamics. One natural approach is to measure the average increase in energy of an ancillary system, called the battery, after a work extraction protocol. The quality of energy extracted is usually argued to be good by...

The properties of thermodynamical operations

The resource theory approach is a recently developed framework used in the study of thermodynamics for finite sized quantum systems. A simple way to describe how a quantum system evolves under energy-preserving unitaries while interacting with thermal reservoirs, has been formulated in the framework of thermal operations. Despite the conceptual...

Limits to catalysis in quantum thermodynamics

Quantum thermodynamics is a research field that aims at fleshing out the ultimate limits of thermodynamic processes in the deep quantum regime. A complete picture of thermodynamical processes naturally allows for auxiliary systems dubbed 'catalysts', i.e., any physical systems facilitating state transformations while remaining essentially...