Dipartimento di Scienze, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146, Rome, Italy.
NEST, Scuola Normale Superiore and Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, I-56126, Pisa, Italy.
Phys Rev Lett. 2018 Oct 19;121(16):160602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.160602.
The Clausius inequality has deep implications for reversibility and the arrow of time. Quantum theory is able to extend this result for closed systems by inspecting the trajectory of the density matrix on its manifold. Here we show that this approach can provide an upper and lower bound to the irreversible entropy production for open quantum systems as well. These provide insights on how the information on the initial state is forgotten through a thermalization process. Limits of the applicability of our bounds are discussed and demonstrated in a quantum photonic simulator.
克劳修斯不等式对可逆性和时间箭头具有深远的影响。量子理论通过检查密度矩阵在其流形上的轨迹，能够将这一结果扩展到封闭系统。在这里，我们表明这种方法也可以为开放量子系统提供不可逆熵产生的上限和下限。这些结果提供了关于初始状态信息如何通过热化过程被遗忘的见解。讨论了我们界限的适用范围，并在量子光子模拟器中进行了演示。
