Possibility of the total thermodynamic entropy production rate of a finite-sized isolated quantum system to be negative for the Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad-type Markovian dynamics of its subsystem

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in a finite-sized isolated quantum system modeled by coupled harmonic oscillators, the total thermodynamic entropy production rate can be negative under GKSL-type Markovian dynamics, challenging common assumptions.

Contribution

The study provides a counterexample showing that the total entropy production rate can be negative even with Markovian dynamics, using an analytically and numerically studied quantum oscillator model.

Findings

Total thermodynamic entropy satisfies the third law.

Entropy production rate can be negative under GKSL dynamics.

Counterexample to the non-negativity of entropy production rate.

Abstract

We investigate a total thermodynamic entropy production rate of an isolated quantum system. In particular, we consider a quantum model of coupled harmonic oscillators in a star configuration, where a central harmonic oscillator (system) is coupled to a finite number of surrounding harmonic oscillators (bath). In this model, when the initial state of the total system is given by the tensor product of the Gibbs states of the system and the bath, every harmonic oscillator is always in a Gibbs state with a time-dependent temperature. This enables us to define time-dependent thermodynamic entropy for each harmonic oscillator and total nonequilibrium thermodynamic entropy as the summation of them. We analytically confirm that the total thermodynamic entropy satisfies the third law of thermodynamics. Our numerical solutions show that, even when the dynamics of the system is well approximated by the Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad (GKSL)-type Markovian master equation, the total thermodynamic entropy production rate can be negative, while the total thermodynamic entropy satisfies the second law of thermodynamics. This result is a counterexample to the common belief that the total entropy production rate is non-negative when the system is under the GKSL-type Markovian dynamics.