We study the physical mechanism of Maxwells Demon (MD) helping to do extra work in thermodynamic cycles, by describing measurement of position, insertion of wall and information erasing of MD in a quantum mechanical fashion. The heat engine is exempl
ified with one molecule confined in an infinitely deep square potential inserted with a movable solid wall, while the MD is modeled as a two-level system (TLS) for measuring and controlling the motion of the molecule. It is discovered that the the MD with quantum coherence or on a lower temperature than that of the heat bath of the particle would enhance the ability of the whole work substance formed by the system plus the MD to do work outside. This observation reveals that the role of the MD essentially is to drive the whole work substance being off equilibrium, or equivalently working with an effective temperature difference. The elaborate studies with this model explicitly reveal the effect of finite size off the classical limit or thermodynamic limit, which contradicts the common sense on Szilard heat engine (SHE). The quantum SHEs efficiency is evaluated in detail to prove the validity of second law of thermodynamics.
The thermodynamic influence of quantum probing on an object is studied. Here, quantum probing is understood as a pre-measurement based on a non-demolition interaction, which records some information of the probed object, but does not change its energ
y state when both the probing apparatus and the probed object are isolated from the environment. It is argued that when the probing apparatus and the probed object are immersed in a same equilibrium environment, the probing can affect the effective temperature of the object or induce a quantum isothermal process for the object to transfer its energy. This thermodynamic feature can be regarded as a witness of the existence of quantum probing even if the quantum probing would not disturb the object if the environment were not present.
For Hawking radiation, treated as a tunneling process, the no-hair theorem of black hole together with the law of energy conservation is utilized to postulate that the tunneling rate only depends on the external qualities (e.g., the mass for the Schw
arzschild black hole) and the energy of the radiated particle. This postulate is justified by the WKB approximation for calculating the tunneling probability. Based on this postulate, a general formula for the tunneling probability is derived without referring to the concrete form of black hole metric. This formula implies an intrinsic correlation between the successive processes of the black hole radiation of two or more particles. It also suggests a kind of entropy conservation and thus resolves the puzzle of black hole information loss in some sense.
Hermann Feshbach predicted fifty years ago that when two atomic nuclei are scattered within an open entrance channel-- the state observable at infinity, they may enter an intermediate closed channel -- the locally bounded state of the nuclei. If the
energy of a bound state of in the closed channel is fine-tuned to match the relative kinetic energy, then the open channel and the closed channel resonate, so that the scattering length becomes divergent. We find that this so-called Feshbach resonance phenomenon not only exists during the collisions of massive particles, but also emerges during the coherent transport of massless particles, that is, photons confined in the coupled resonator arrays cite{lzhou08}. We implement the open and the closed channels inside a pair of such arrays, linked by a separated cavity or a tunable qubit. When a single photon is bounded inside the closed channel by setting the relevant physical parameters appropriately, the vanishing transmission appears to display this photonic Feshbach resonance. The general construction can be implemented through various experimentally feasible solid state systems, such as the couple defected cavities in photonic crystals. The numerical simulation based on finite-different time-domain(FDTD) method confirms our conceive about physical implementation.
In this letter, we investigate the coherent tunneling process of photons between a defected circular resonator and a waveguide based on the recently developed discrete coordinate scattering methods (L. Zhou et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 100501 (2008)
). We show the detailed microscopic mechanism of the tunneling and present a simple model for defect coupling in the resonator. The Finite-Difference Time-Domain(FDTD) numerical results is explored to illustrate the analysis results.
We propose a special cavity design that is constructed by terminating a one-dimensional waveguide with a perfect mirror at one end and doping a two-level atom at the other. We show that this atom plays the intrinsic role of a semi-transparent mirror
for single photon transports such that quasi-normal modes (QNMs) emerge spontaneously in the cavity system. This atomic mirror has its reflection coefficient tunable through its level spacing and its coupling to the cavity field, for which the cavity system can be regarded as a two-end resonator with a continuously tunable leakage. The overall investigation predicts the existence of quasi-bound states in the waveguide continuum. Solid state implementations based on a dc-SQUID circuit and a defected line resonator embedded in a photonic crystal are illustrated to show the experimental accessibility of the generic model.
This is the second one in our series of papers on indirect quantum control assisted by quantum accessor. In this paper we propose and study a new class of indirect quantum control(IDQC) scheme based on the initial states preparation of the accessor.
In the present scheme, after the initial state of the accessor is properly prepared, the system is controlled by repeatedly switching on and off the interaction between the system and the accessor. This is different from the protocol of our first paper, where we manipulate the interaction between the controlled system and the accessor. We prove the controllability of the controlled system for the proposed indirect control scheme. Furthermore, we give an example with two coupled spins qubits to illustrate the scheme, the concrete control process and the controllability.
