Relating Heat and Entanglement in Strong Coupling Thermodynamics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new approach to quantum thermodynamics under strong coupling, accounting for quantum resources like coherence and entanglement, and demonstrates how entanglement arises from heat imbalances.

Contribution

It develops a novel method to analyze thermodynamics in strong coupling regimes, incorporating quantum resources, and applies it to a GADC system to reveal entanglement dynamics.

Findings

Transient heat imbalance leads to entanglement generation.

The approach accurately captures heat and entanglement evolution.

Quantum resources influence thermodynamic behavior in strong coupling.

Abstract

Explaining the influence of strong coupling in the dynamics of open quantum systems is one of the most challenging issues in the rapidly growing field of quantum thermodynamics. By using a particular definition of heat, we develop a new approach to study thermodynamics in the strong coupling regime, which takes into account quantum resources as coherence and entanglement. We apply the method to calculate the time-dependent thermodynamic properties of a system and an environment interacting via the generalized amplitude-damping channel (GADC). The results indicate that the transient imbalance between heat dissipated and heat absorbed that occurs in the process is responsible for the generation of system-environment entanglement.