Publication: Quantum scattering as a work source
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2022-06-29
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Verein Forderung Open Access Publizierens Quantenwissenschaf
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Abstract
We consider a collision between a moving particle and a fixed system, each having internal degrees of freedom. We identify the regime where the motion of the particle acts as a work source for the joint internal system, leading to energy changes which preserve the entropy. This regime arises when the particle has high kinetic energy and its quantum state of motion is broad in momentum and narrow in space, whether pure or mixed. In this case, the scattering map ruling the dynamics of the internal degrees of freedom becomes unitary and equivalent to that of a time-dependent interaction between the internal degrees of freedom of the colliding systems. It follows that the kinetic energy lost by the particle during the autonomous quantum collision coincides with the work performed by the time-dependent interaction. Recently, collisions with particles were shown to act as heat sources under suitable conditions; here we show that they can also act as work sources. This opens interesting perspectives for quantum thermodynamics formulations within scattering theory.
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SLJ is supported by the Doctoral Training Unit on Materials for Sensing and Energy Harvesting (MASSENA) with the grant: FNR PRIDE/15/10935404. ME is also funded by the European Research Council (project NanoThermo, ERC-2015-CoG Agreement No. 681456) and the Foundational Questions Institute Fund (Grant number FQXi-IAF19-05). F. B. thanks Fondecyt project 1191441 and ANID - Millennium Science Initiative Program - NCN19_170. Part of this work was conducted at the KITP, a facility supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF PHY-1748958. JMRP acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Government (Grant FLUID, PID2020-113455GB-I00) and from the Foundational Questions Institute Fund, a donor advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation (Grant number FQXi-IAF19-01).