QTD-INFLEXITY QUANTUM THERMODYNAMICS: INFORMATION, FLUCTUATIONS AND COMPLEXITY

In the last two decades, thermodynamics has been extended to describe small systems, where the action of environmental noise “blurs” traditional thermodynamic constraints and information plays a central role. While the first law of thermodynamics (aka energy conservation) holds at the microscale, the second law becomes more subtle and is manifested on a statistical level, through the emergence of a set of universal nonequilibrium fluctuation relations that may take the form of both equalities or inequalities. These impose fundamental restrictions on the shape that probability distributions of key thermodynamic quantities such as work, heat or entropy production may take, which can in turn be used to predict universal features of out‐of‐equilibrium behavior. Even more, when the dimensions of the system are small enough and the temperatures sufficiently low, quantum effects can no longer be neglected, and main thermodynamic concepts have to be rebuild. This new arena also opens the door to novel features not present in the classical case, that may help to not only refine our understanding of fundamental issues, but also to learn how to engineer quantum systems such that a thermodynamic advantage based on quantum effects can be achieved. This project aims to study the impact of information and quantum effects in the operation capabilities and fluctuations experienced by small thermal machines, both classical and quantum, that using thermal resources perform useful tasks such as work extraction, refrigeration, computing, or measuring the passage of time.