The First Law of Quantum Field Thermodynamics

TL;DR

This paper develops a framework for defining work fluctuations in quantum field theory, ensuring consistency with thermodynamics and fluctuation theorems, and provides a non-perturbative analysis of localized quantum processes.

Contribution

It introduces new work distributions compatible with QFT that satisfy the first law and Crooks theorem, extending thermodynamic concepts to quantum fields.

Findings

Work distributions satisfy the first law up to second moments

Distributions obey Crooks theorem in QFT

Provides non-perturbative analysis of spacetime localized unitaries

Abstract

We study the notion of work fluctuations in quantum field theory, highlighting that the most common definitions used in finite-dimensional quantum systems cannot be applied to quantum field theory (QFT). Then we propose work distributions that are compatible with QFT and we show that they satisfy the first law of thermodynamics up to second moments. We also show how these distributions satisfy Crooks theorem and provide a fully non-perturbative thermodynamic analysis of spacetime localized unitary processes on a quantum field.