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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Thermodynamics was developed at the dawn of the industrial revolution to understand and optimize the new disruptive technology of the time, the steam engine. Today, emerging quantum technologies seem poised to usher in a new technological revolution based on the foundation of the quantum advantage - that quantum devices can harness phenomena such as entanglement, superposition, and coherence to outperform their classical counterparts. It is imperative, then, that we understand whether this potentially exponential increase in performance from the use of quantum resources comes with the price of exponentially increasing energetic costs, and in what ways such costs might be minimized. The developing field of quantum thermodynamics is uniquely poised to answer such questions. However, extending the framework of thermodynamics to the quantum realm requires a well-established theoretical and practical framework. Following in historical tradition, heat engines have proven the ideal system for this task. In this talk, we explore the quantum thermodynamics of indistinguishable particles, guided by the analysis of quantum thermal machines.
Host: Zoe Holmes