Zou Chen-Juan, Li Yue, Xu Jia-Kun, You Jia-Bin, Png Ching Eng, Yang Wan-Li
Research Center of Nonlinear Science, School of Mathematical and Physical Science, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan 430200, China.
State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China.
Entropy (Basel). 2023 Jan 9;25(1):128. doi: 10.3390/e25010128.
Irreversible entropy production (IEP) plays an important role in quantum thermodynamic processes. Here, we investigate the geometrical bounds of IEP in nonequilibrium thermodynamics by exemplifying a system coupled to a squeezed thermal bath subject to dissipation and dephasing, respectively. We find that the geometrical bounds of the IEP always shift in a contrary way under dissipation and dephasing, where the lower and upper bounds turning to be tighter occur in the situation of dephasing and dissipation, respectively. However, either under dissipation or under dephasing, we may reduce both the critical time of the IEP itself and the critical time of the bounds for reaching an equilibrium by harvesting the benefits of squeezing effects in which the values of the IEP, quantifying the degree of thermodynamic irreversibility, also become smaller. Therefore, due to the nonequilibrium nature of the squeezed thermal bath, the system-bath interaction energy has a prominent impact on the IEP, leading to tightness of its bounds. Our results are not contradictory with the second law of thermodynamics by involving squeezing of the bath as an available resource, which can improve the performance of quantum thermodynamic devices.
不可逆熵产生（IEP）在量子热力学过程中起着重要作用。在此，我们通过分别举例一个与受耗散和退相作用的压缩热库耦合的系统，研究非平衡热力学中IEP的几何界限。我们发现，在耗散和退相作用下，IEP的几何界限总是以相反的方式移动，其中下限和上限分别在退相和耗散的情况下变得更紧。然而，无论是在耗散还是退相情况下，我们都可以通过利用压缩效应的益处来减少IEP本身的临界时间以及达到平衡的界限的临界时间，在这种情况下，量化热力学不可逆程度的IEP值也会变小。因此，由于压缩热库的非平衡性质，系统 - 热库相互作用能对IEP有显著影响，导致其界限变紧。我们的结果通过将热库的压缩作为一种可用资源，与热力学第二定律并不矛盾，这可以提高量子热力学装置的性能。
