An approach to study the adiabaticity and irreversibility in the TDHO

TL;DR

This paper investigates the interplay of adiabaticity, irreversibility, and thermalization in a time-dependent quantum harmonic oscillator, providing analytical insights into energy dynamics and potential quantum violations of thermodynamic principles.

Contribution

It offers analytical solutions for the TDHO's evolution in non-quasi-static regimes, revealing spontaneous thermalization and a classical-to-quantum transition during unitary evolution.

Findings

Energy eigenstates undergo spontaneous thermalization.

Thermalization occurs without external heat baths.

Potential quantum violation of the third law of thermodynamics.

Abstract

This work studies the relationship between parametric amplification (or particle creation), adiabaticity and irreversibility in the non-quasi-static regime of a time-dependent quantum harmonic oscillator (TDHO) that evolves unitarily. We provide analytical results for the evolution of the TDHO valid for any functional value of the frequency, which enables us to monitor the behavior of the thermodynamical magnitudes in the non-quasi-static regime. In the latter, the largest modes of the energy eigenstates commonly undergo a process of spontaneous thermalization, where the concept of temperature naturally arises from the unitary evolution of the oscillator, i.e. without relation to any external source of temperature or thermal bath. As the evolution is unitary, this thermalization process can be reversible, facilitating the monitoring of an unexpected \emph{classical-to-quantum} transition that might entail a quantum violation of the third principle of classical thermodynamics. We adapt the standard definitions of quantum heat and work to account for the change in the populations of the energy levels in the non-quasi-static evolution of the TDHO.