Thermodynamic resources in continuous-variable quantum systems

TL;DR

This paper develops a framework to identify and quantify thermodynamic and quantum resources in bosonic continuous-variable systems, revealing new temperature measures, information capacity, and non-classicality indicators.

Contribution

It introduces bosonic linear thermal operations and identifies quantum properties that extend classical thermodynamic resource concepts.

Findings

Defined temperature-like quantities for quantum non-equilibrium states

Quantified information-carrying capacity via signal-to-noise ratios

Linked non-classicality measures to sensing and estimation performance

Abstract

Thermodynamic resources, beyond their well-known usefulness in work extraction and other thermodynamic tasks, are often important also in tasks that are not evidently thermodynamic. Here we develop a framework for identifying such resources in diverse applications of bosonic continuous-variable systems. Introducing the class of bosonic linear thermal operations to model operationally-feasible processes, we apply this model to identify uniquely quantum properties of bosonic states that refine classical notions of thermodynamic resourcefulness. Among these are (1) a suite of temperature-like quantities generalizing the equilibrium temperature to quantum, non-equilibrium scenarios; (2) signal-to-noise ratios quantifying a system's capacity to carry information in phase-space displacement; and (3) well-established non-classicality measures quantifying the resolution in sensing and parameter estimation tasks.