Beyond heat baths II: Framework for generalized thermodynamic resource theories

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for generalized thermodynamic resource theories, extending their applicability to diverse physical systems and incorporating noncommutative variables, thereby broadening the scope of small-scale thermodynamics modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a unified structure for thermodynamic resource theories that includes various baths and interactions, and generalizes key principles like Szilard's engine and Landauer's Principle.

Findings

Resourcefulness can be converted among diverse degrees of freedom.

Noncommutative variables introduce nonclassical effects into thermodynamics.

The framework models electrochemical, gravitational, and magnetic systems.

Abstract

Thermodynamics, which describes vast systems, has been reconciled with small scales, relevant to single-molecule experiments, in resource theories. Resource theories have been used to model exchanges of energy and information. Recently, particle exchanges were modeled; and an umbrella family of thermodynamic resource theories was proposed to model diverse baths, interactions, and free energies. This paper motivates and details the family's structure and prospective applications. How to model electrochemical, gravitational, magnetic, and other thermodynamic systems is explained. Szilard's engine and Landauer's Principle are generalized, as resourcefulness is shown to be convertible not only between information and gravitational energy, but also among diverse degrees of freedom. Extensive variables are associated with quantum operators that might fail to commute, introducing extra nonclassicality into thermodynamic resource theories. An early version of this paper partially motivated the later development of noncommutative thermalization. This generalization expands the theories' potential for modeling realistic systems with which small-scale statistical mechanics might be tested experimentally.