Interference of Identical Particles and the Quantum Work Distribution

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quantum interference among identical particles affects the work distribution during non-equilibrium thermodynamic processes, revealing significant differences at low temperatures between Bosons and Fermions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute quantum work distributions for identical Bosons and Fermions, highlighting their differences from distinguishable particles and providing analytical examples.

Findings

Work distributions differ significantly for Bosons and Fermions at low temperatures.

At high temperatures, quantum work distributions approach classical results.

Analytical solutions are provided for the infinite square well and harmonic oscillator.

Abstract

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.