Measuring work and heat in ultracold quantum gases

TL;DR

This paper introduces an experimental scheme to measure heat and work in ultracold quantum gases using light-atom interactions and homodyne detection, enabling thermodynamic analysis of quantum processes.

Contribution

It presents a novel method to directly measure work and heat in cold atomic systems via POVM implementation through light polarization interactions.

Findings

Work measurement implemented via light quadrature detection.

Protocol enables verification of fluctuation theorems.

Allows study of non-unitary quantum thermodynamic processes.

Abstract

We propose a feasible experimental scheme to direct measure heat and work in cold atomic setups. The method is based on a recent proposal which shows that work is a positive operator valued measure (POVM). In the present contribution, we demonstrate that the interaction between the atoms and the light polarisation of a probe laser allows us to implement such POVM. In this way the work done on or extracted from the atoms after a given process is encoded in the light quadrature that can be measured with a standard homodyne detection. The protocol allows one to verify fluctuation theorems and study properties of the non-unitary dynamics of a given thermodynamic process.