Fluctuations of work in nearly adiabatically driven open quantum systems

TL;DR

This paper develops an extended quantum jump method for nearly adiabatically driven open quantum systems, enabling accurate work measurement and fluctuation theorems, with numerical analysis highlighting the importance of precise heat exchange modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a new framework for analyzing work and fluctuation relations in nearly adiabatic open quantum systems, improving upon previous approximations.

Findings

Derived the integral fluctuation theorem and Jarzynski equality for nearly adiabatic driving.

Numerical results show the conventional diabatic approximation misses key work distribution features.

Emphasized the importance of accurate drive-dressed heat exchange in experiments.

Abstract

We extend the quantum jump method to nearly adiabatically driven open quantum systems in a way that allows for an accurate account of the external driving in the system-environment interaction. Using this framework, we construct the corresponding trajectory-dependent work performed on the system and derive the integral fluctuation theorem and the Jarzynski equality for nearly adiabatic driving. We show that such identities hold as long as the stochastic dynamics and work variable are consistently defined. We numerically study the emerging work statistics for a two-level quantum system and find that the conventional diabatic approximation is unable to capture some prominent features arising from driving such as the continuity of the probability density of work. Our results reveal the necessity of using accurate expressions for the drive-dressed heat exchange in future experiments probing jump time distributions.