Hi everyone,
I would like to advertise our latest paper, published on Phys. Rev. Lett. on the relation between Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relations and Fluctuation theorems. This paper is a collaboration between myself, from IFUSP, Prof. André Timpanaro from UFABC and Dr. Giacomo Guarnieri and Prof. John Goold, from Trinity College, Dublin.
A. M. Timpanaro, G. Guarnieri, J. Goold, G. T. Landi, “Thermodynamic uncertainty relations from exchange fluctuation theorems.” Physical Review Letters, 123, 090604 (2019).
Nanoscaled engines and related devices can be prone to significant thermal and quantum fluctuations Recently, fundamental relations in thermodynamics have been discovered, called “thermodynamic uncertainty relations” (TURs). They provide universal bounds on the fluctuations of any current and relate them to the systems entropy production rate. In physical terms, this implies that the less noisy one wants a thermal machine to be, then the more one has to pay in dissipated heat. This has generated a new field known as thermodynamics of precision, which has implications in design of heat engines, biomolecular and even in the determining the accuracy of biological clocks.
TURs were initially thought to be a consequence of classical markovian dynamics, but here in this work we show that they are actually a consequence of the most refined version of the second law of thermodynamics, i.e. the fluctuation theorems. The discovery and experimental confirmation of fluctuation theorems has inspired a new microscopic description of quantum and classical thermodynamics which goes well beyond the regime of linear response and is a promising route to understand the thermodynamics of small quantum systems operating under non-equilibrium conditions.
In our paper we specifically focus on the class of fluctuation theorems known as exchange fluctuation theorems and derive the tightest TUR possible under these conditions. Our results both in the classical and quantum mechanical domain. Our paper shows how the notion of precision applies to a much larger class of physical systems than originally anticipated. We therefore expect that our findings will help understanding and controlling the next generation of nano-scale heat engines.
SPIN off QuBIT 