Coherence manipulation in asymmetry and thermodynamics

TL;DR

This paper investigates how coherence affects quantum thermodynamic transformations, demonstrating that catalysis and free energy sources can amplify coherence and suppress correlations, advancing the understanding of quantum thermodynamics laws.

Contribution

It introduces a framework combining catalysis and free energy sources to manipulate quantum coherence, filling a gap in quantum thermodynamics theory.

Findings

Catalysis with free energy sources can arbitrarily amplify quantum coherence.

Correlations between system and catalyst can be arbitrarily suppressed.

Provides a step towards a general law of quantum thermodynamics.

Abstract

In the classical regime, thermodynamic state transformations are governed by the free energy. This is also called as the second law of thermodynamics. Previous works showed that, access to a catalytic system allows us to restore the second law in the quantum regime when we ignore coherence. However, in the quantum regime, coherence and free energy are two independent resources. Therefore, coherence places additional non-trivial restrictions on the the state transformations, that remains elusive. In order to close this gap, we isolate and study the nature of coherence, i.e., we assume access to a source of free energy. We show that allowing catalysis along with a source of free energy allows us to amplify any quantum coherence present in the quantum state arbitrarily. Additionally, any correlations between the system and the catalyst can be suppressed arbitrarily. Therefore, our results provide a key step in formulating a fully general law of quantum thermodynamics.