We investigate the thermodynamics of simple (non-interacting) transport models beyond the scope of weak coupling. For a single fermionic or bosonic level -- tunnel-coupled to two reservoirs -- exact expressions for the stationary matter and energy cu
rrent are derived from the solutions of the Heisenberg equations of motion. The positivity of the steady-state entropy production rate is demonstrated explicitly. Finally, for a configuration in which particles are pumped upwards in chemical potential by a downward temperature gradient, we demonstrate that the thermodynamic efficiency of this process decreases when the coupling strength between system and reservoirs is increased, as a direct consequence of the loss of a tight coupling between energy and matter currents.
We study the phenomenology of maximum-entropy meso-reservoirs, where we assume that their local thermal equilibrium state changes consistently with the heat transferred between the meso-reservoirs. Depending on heat and matter carrying capacities, th
e chemical potentials and temperatures are allowed to vary in time, and using global conservation relations we solve their evolution equations. We compare two-terminal transport between bosonic and fermionic meso-reservoirs via systems that tightly couple energy and matter currents and systems that do not. For bosonic reservoirs we observe the temporary formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate in one of the meso-reservoirs from an initial nonequilibrium setup.
We consider bosonic transport through one-dimensional spin systems. Transport is induced by coupling the spin systems to bosonic reservoirs kept at different temperatures. In the limit of weak-coupling between spins and bosons we apply the quantum-op
tical master equation to calculate the energy transmitted from source to drain reservoirs. At large thermal bias, we find that the current for longitudinal transport becomes independent of the chain length and is also not drastically affected by the presence of disorder. In contrast, at small temperatures, the current scales inversely with the chain length and is further suppressed in presence of disorder. We also find that the critical behaviour of the ground state is mapped to critical behaviour of the current -- even in configurations with infinite thermal bias.
We suggest that a single-electron transistor continuously monitored by a quantum point contact may function as a Maxwell demon when closed-loop feedback operations are applied as time-dependent modifications of the tunneling rates across its junction
s. The device may induce a current across the single-electron transistor even when no bias voltage or thermal gradient is applied. For different feedback schemes, we derive effective master equations and compare the induced feedback current and its fluctuations as well as the generated power. Provided that tunneling rates can be modified without changing the transistor level, the device may be implemented with current technology.
For open quantum systems coupled to a thermal bath at inverse temperature $beta$, it is well known that under the Born-, Markov-, and secular approximations the system density matrix will approach the thermal Gibbs state with the bath inverse tempera
ture $beta$. We generalize this to systems where there exists a conserved quantity (e.g., the total particle number), where for a bath characterized by inverse temperature $beta$ and chemical potential $mu$ we find equilibration of both temperature and chemical potential. For couplings to multiple baths held at different temperatures and different chemical potentials, we identify a class of systems that equilibrates according to a single hypothetical average but in general non-thermal bath, which may be exploited to generate desired non-thermal states. Under special circumstances the stationary state may be again be described by a unique Boltzmann factor. These results are illustrated by several examples.
Many physically interesting models show a quantum phase transition when a single parameter is varied through a critical point, where the ground state and the first excited state become degenerate. When this parameter appears as a coupling constant, t
hese models can be understood as straight-line interpolations between different Hamiltonians $H_{rm I}$ and $H_{rm F}$. For finite-size realizations however, there will usually be a finite energy gap between ground and first excited state. By slowly changing the coupling constant through the point with the minimum energy gap one thereby has an adiabatic algorithm that prepares the ground state of $H_{rm F}$ from the ground state of $H_{rm I}$. The adiabatic theorem implies that in order to obtain a good preparation fidelity the runtime $tau$ should scale with the inverse energy gap and thereby also with the system size. In addition, for open quantum systems not only non-adiabatic but also thermal excitations are likely to occur. It is shown that -- using only local Hamiltonians -- for the 1d quantum Ising model and the cluster model in a transverse field the conventional straight line path can be replaced by a series of straight-line interpolations, along which the fundamental energy gap is always greater than a constant independent on the system size. The results are of interest for adiabatic quantum computation since strong similarities between adiabatic quantum algorithms and quantum phase transitions exist.
