The resource theory under conditioned thermal operations

TL;DR

This paper extends the thermal operations framework to bipartite quantum devices with a control component, defining conditioned thermal operations and analyzing the resource called conditional athermality, including its quantification and conversion conditions.

Contribution

It introduces conditioned thermal operations for hybrid bipartite systems and characterizes the resource theory of conditional athermality, including its quantification and conversion rules.

Findings

Defined conditioned thermal operations for bipartite systems.

Quantified conditional athermality in the quasiclassical limit.

Established conditions for resource conversion.

Abstract

The "thermal operations" framework developed in past works is used to model the evolution of microscopic quantum systems in contact with thermal baths. Here we extend this model to bipartite devices with one part acting as a control external to the system--bath setup. We define the operations of such hybrid devices as conditioned thermal operations. We examine the resource under these operations, which we call conditional athermality. In the quasiclassical limit, we quantify this resource and find the conditions for its conversion between different forms.