Speaker
Prof.
Erik Aurell
(KTH)
Description
We compute the change of the von Neumann entropy of a bath
coupled to an externally driven quantum system by adapting
the formalism of Feynman and Vernon (1963). This quantity
has been proposed as a possible extension of classical
entropy production in the environment to the quantum domain
(Esposito, Lindenberg, Van den Broeck 2010; Pucci, Esposito,
Peliti 2013). In general we find that this entropy change is
the (quantum) expectation value of three functionals over
the forward and reversed paths in the Feynman-Vernon
formalism. The classical limit of these functionals partly
reproduces the well-known classical entropy production in
the environment of a Kramers-Langevin process, and partly
gives rise to new terms which have no analogous in
stochastic thermodynamics. We do not at this time have a
clear understanding of the physical meaning of these terms.
This is joint work with Ralf Eichhorn, available as
arXiv:1412.7029.
