Work, heat and entropy production along quantum trajectories

TL;DR

This paper extends stochastic thermodynamics to open quantum systems by analyzing entropy, work, and heat at the trajectory level, highlighting quantum contributions from decoherence through three illustrative examples.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum trajectory-based framework for stochastic thermodynamics, revealing quantum effects in entropy production and energy exchanges.

Findings

Quantum trajectories can be used to analyze thermodynamic quantities.

Decoherence induces genuine quantum contributions to entropy production.

Applications include quantum thermalization, fluorescence, and continuous measurement scenarios.

Abstract

Quantum open systems evolve according to completely positive, trace preserving maps acting on the density operator, which can equivalently be unraveled in term of so-called quantum trajectories. These stochastic sequences of pure states correspond to the actual dynamics of the quantum system during single realizations of an experiment in which the system's environment is monitored. In this chapter, we present an extension of stochastic thermodynamics to the case of open quantum systems, which builds on the analogy between the quantum trajectories and the trajectories in phase space of classical stochastic thermodynamics. We analyze entropy production, work and heat exchanges at the trajectory level, identifying genuinely quantum contributions due to decoherence induced by the environment. We present three examples: the thermalization of a quantum system, the fluorescence of a driven qubit and the continuous monitoring of a qubit's observable.