New PRL from UFABC/IFUSP

Hi everyone,

I wanted to publicize a paper recently published in collaboration with Prof. Fernando Semião, from UFABC, together with researchers from Belfast, Cambridge, Viena and Zürich, on the experimental reconstruction of entropy production in mesoscopic quantum systems.

The paper was published in Physical Review Letters. It was chosen as editor suggestion and also appeared on the Synopsis section of the APS website.

In this paper we applied a formalism previously developed for estimating the entropy production (a quantifier of irreversibility) in quantum systems subject to non-equilibrium baths. Using this model, we were able to reconstruct the entropy production in a Bose-Einstein condensate (from Esslinger’s group in Zürich) and in an optomechanical cavity (from Aspelmeyer’s group in Viena).

Our results offer the first experimental demonstration of the contribution of quantum fluctuations in maintaining a non-equilibrium steady-state and, consequently, producing irreversible entropy.

Gabriel T. Landi