Reply to "Comment on `Extending the laws of thermodynamics for arbitrary autonomous quantum systems'"

TL;DR

This paper defends a quantum thermodynamics framework against critiques by clarifying assumptions and emphasizing its ability to explore quantum systems beyond classical thermodynamics scales.

Contribution

It clarifies the assumptions underlying their quantum thermodynamics framework and highlights its capacity to analyze quantum systems outside classical thermodynamic limits.

Findings

Contradictions with classical thermodynamics vanish under certain assumptions.

The framework can analyze quantum systems' work and heat exchange at non-classical scales.

The paper expands on the connection between quantum and classical thermodynamics.

Abstract

In his Comment [1], Philip Strasberg (PS) argues from the analysis of different examples that the framework we have presented in [2] does not recover known results of macroscopic textbook thermodynamics. Here, we show that such apparent contradictions disappear when the necessary assumptions the aforementioned known results pre-suppose are applied. Those assumptions concern the control ability of the observer, the nature of the described degree of freedom, or the scale of the systems. The ability to relax those assumptions is precisely a motivation of our framework, which can explore the capacity of quantum systems to exchange work and heat even at scales not captured by textbook thermodynamics. We take the opportunity of this reply to further expand on the use of our framework and its connections with traditional thermodynamics.