IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/eurphb/v54y2006i3p405-414.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Quantum Brownian motion and the second law of thermodynamics

Author

Listed:
  • ILki Kim
  • Günter Mahler

Abstract

We consider a single harmonic oscillator coupled to a bath at zero temperature. As is well-known, the oscillator then has a higher average energy than that given by its ground state. Here we show analytically that for a damping model with arbitrarily discrete distribution of bath modes and damping models with continuous distributions of bath modes with cut-off frequencies, this excess energy is less than the work needed to couple the system to the bath, therefore, the quantum second law is not violated. On the other hand, the second law may be violated for bath modes without cut-off frequencies, which are, however, physically unrealistic models. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2006

Suggested Citation

  • ILki Kim & Günter Mahler, 2006. "Quantum Brownian motion and the second law of thermodynamics," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 54(3), pages 405-414, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:eurphb:v:54:y:2006:i:3:p:405-414
    DOI: 10.1140/epjb/e2007-00013-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1140/epjb/e2007-00013-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1140/epjb/e2007-00013-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:eurphb:v:54:y:2006:i:3:p:405-414. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.