Quasi-probabilities of work and heat in an open quantum system

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to measure and analyze work, heat, and energy changes in open quantum systems using quantum detectors, revealing quantum features through quasi-probability functions and their classical limits.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to determine quantum thermodynamic quantities via phase measurements, preserving quantum features and identifying conditions for quantum advantage.

Findings

Quasi-probability functions can reveal quantum effects in energy exchange.

Negative regions in these functions indicate non-classical quantum processes.

Quantum features diminish under strong dissipation, approaching classical behavior.

Abstract

We discuss an approach to determine averages of the work, dissipated heat and variation of internal energy of an open quantum system driven by an external classical field. These quantities are measured by coupling the quantum system to a quantum detector at different times. This approach allows us to preserve the full quantum features of the evolution. From the measured phase, we are able to obtain a quasi-characteristic function and a quasi-probability density function for the corresponding observables. Despite the fact that these quasi-probability density functions are not the results of direct measurements, they reproduce the expected value of the physical quantities. Analogously to the Wigner function, the negative regions of these quasi-probability density functions are directly related to pure quantum processes which are not interpretable in classical terms. We use this feature to show that in the limit of strong dissipation, the quantum features vanish and interpret this as the emergence of the classical limit of the energy exchange process. Our analysis explains and confirms the behavior observed in recent experiments performed on IBMQ devices [1]. The possibility to discriminate between classical and quantum features makes the proposed approach an excellent tool to determine if, and in which conditions, quantum effects can be exploited to increase the efficiency in an energy exchange process at the quantum level.