A comment on a possible inadequacy of new redefinitions of heat and work in quantum thermodynamics

TL;DR

This paper critically examines recent redefinitions of heat and work in quantum thermodynamics, highlighting potential issues through specific examples that question their adequacy and consistency.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of new heat and work definitions in quantum thermodynamics, revealing potential shortcomings and inconsistencies with established concepts.

Findings

New definitions associate heat with entropy variation

Work is linked to variation of state vectors in the new framework

Counterexamples suggest possible inadequacies of these redefinitions

Abstract

We analyze the new redefinitions of heat Q and work W recently presented in [arXiv: 1912.01939; arXiv:1912.01983v5] in the quantum thermodynamics domain. According to these redefinitions, heat must be associated with the variation of entropy, while work must be associated with variation of state vectors. Analyzing the behavior of two specific examples, we show some peculiarities of these new redefinitions which, based on the counterexample presented, seems to point to a possible inadequacy of these redefinitions.