Robustness as a thermodynamic currency: work advantages and preparation costs of nonclassical states

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that all forms of quantum non-classicality can serve as thermodynamic resources, enabling higher work extraction, but at potentially higher preparation costs, with advantages scaling with resource robustness.

Contribution

It establishes a universal link between quantum resource robustness and thermodynamic work advantages, providing operational meaning to robustness measures.

Findings

Quantum non-classicality enhances work extraction in thermodynamics.

Work advantage scales with the robustness of quantum resources.

Preparing resource states can be more thermodynamically costly than non-resource states.

Abstract

Understanding whether uniquely quantum features can provide concrete advantages in thermodynamic processes is a central objective of quantum thermodynamics. A key challenge is quantifying how different forms of non-classicality can be systematically harnessed to enhance thermodynamic tasks. In light of this, we prove that any form of non-classicality can serve as a thermodynamic resource. In particular, any system that possesses quantum magic, coherence, or non-classical correlations can be leveraged to extract higher amounts of work than if the system does not possess such resources. The quantum thermodynamic advantages--quantified by the ratio between work extractable from a resource state and work extractable in its absence--increase with the resource robustness. We show that for any convex quantum resource theory, any resourceful state can yield a work-extraction advantage over all free states via a cyclic quench/thermalization protocol whose Hamiltonian is engineered from an optimal robustness witness. We illustrate concrete examples in which the robustness measures increase with the system's dimension, yielding quantum thermodynamic advantages that scale with it. In contrast, we also show that preparing a resource state (e.g., one with magic, coherence, or non-classical correlations) can be significantly more thermodynamically costly than preparing any state without such a resource. Concretely, there always exists a protocol that can prepare any non-resourceful state at significantly less work than it takes to prepare a resourceful state. Overall, our results provide operational meaning to robustness measures of quantum resources in terms of their thermodynamic costs and advantages.