IFISC-UCM Ph.D. Thesis nominated as an “outstanding Ph. D. research”

Springer editorial awards the research of an UCM-IFISC doctoral student as a part of its recognition program for outstanding Ph.D. theses.

“Thermodynamics and Synchronization in Open Quantum Systems”, Ph.D. thesis defended by Gonzalo Manzano at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and supervised by Juan M.R. Parrondo (UCM) and Roberta Zambrini (IFISC, UIB-CSIC), has been published by the editorial Springer as a part of its Springer Theses collection, with the objective of recognizing outstanding Ph. D. research. 

 

His work includes a broad introduction to open quantum systems and the emerging field of quantum thermodynamics, ideal both for students and newcomers to the field while provides a modern guide to the construction and interpretation of the laws of thermodynamics in the profound quantum world.

The book explores some of the connections between dissipative and quantum effects from a theoretical point of view focusing on three main topics: the relation between synchronization and quantum correlations, the thermodynamic properties of fluctuations, and the performance of quantum thermal machines. Dissipation effects have a profound impact on the behavior and properties of quantum systems, and the unavoidable interaction with the surrounding environment, with which systems continuously exchange information, energy, angular momentum and matter, is ultimately responsible for de-coherence phenomena and the emergence of classical behavior. However, there is a wide intermediate regime in which the interplay between dissipative and quantum effects gives rise to a plethora of rich and striking phenomena that has just started to be understood.