Informal Statistical-Physics Seminar

The steady interest in understanding the thermodynamics of quantum systems has led to several approaches to defining work in a quantum mechanically consistent way (at least almost consistent). The two-point measurement protocol is one such approach that, despite some limitations, has provided a wealth of insight.

Noncommuting conserved quantities have recently launched a subfield of quantum thermodynamics. In conventional thermodynamics, a system of interest and an environment exchange quantities—energy, particles, electric charge, etc.—that are globally conserved and are represented by Hermitian operators. These operators were implicitly assumed to commute with each other, until a few years ago. Freeing the operators to fail to commute has enabled many theoretical discoveries—about reference frames, entropy production, resource-theory models, etc.