Comment on "Measurability of nonequilibrium thermodynamics in terms of the Hamiltonian of mean force"

Structure of the Hamiltonian of mean force

The Hamiltonian of mean force is an effective Hamiltonian that allows a quantum system, nonweakly coupled to an environment, to be written in an effective Gibbs state. We present results on the structure of the Hamiltonian of mean force in extended quantum systems with local interactions. We show that its spatial structure exhibits a "skin effect"-its difference from the system Hamiltonian dies off exponentially with distance from the system-environment boundary. For spin systems, we identify the terms that can appear in the Hamiltonian of mean force at different orders in the inverse temperature.

Thermodynamics and stochastic thermodynamics of strongly coupled systems

We further develop the strong-coupling theory of thermodynamics and stochastic thermodynamics for continuous systems, constructed in the previous work [Phys. Rev. Res. 4, 013015 (2022)2643-156410.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.013015]. A small system strongly interacting with a its environment, the dynamics of the system is assumed to be much slower than that of the bath. The system Hamiltonian is defined to be the Hamiltonian of mean force, whereas the system entropy is defined as the Gibbs-Shannon entropy. Equilibrium ensemble theories and thermodynamic theories are established for the system. Variations of three types of parameters are considered: (i) the system parameter λ which couples to the system and to the interaction, (ii) the bath parameter λ^{'} which couples to the bath only, and (iii) the temperature T=1/β. The work done to the system consists of three parts, proportional to dλ, dλ^{'}, and dβ respectively. The part proportional to dβ can be understood as the work done by the bath. As long as λ^{'} and β are not fixed, the work is not the change of total energy of the joint system. The differences between our strong-coupling equilibrium thermodynamics and the classical thermodynamics are discussed. The thermodynamic theory is promoted to the nonequilibrium level. Both the first and second laws of thermodynamics, as well as fluctuation theorems, are established for nonequilibrium processes. For processes with varying temperatures, fluctuation theorems cannot be expressed in terms of integrated work alone. Regardless of various subtleties, however, the stochastic thermodynamic theory is formulated in terms of system variables only, and dS-βd[over ¯]Q is the change of total entropy. Thermodynamic quantities of the system are related to those of the joint system, and the equivalence of theories at two levels of coarse-graining is explicitly demonstrated. Finally we show that there are infinite numbers of equivalent strong-coupling theories, each determined by its definition of system Hamiltonian. Our theory is distinguished by its maximal similarity with the weak-coupling theory.

Effective Gibbs State for Averaged Observables

We introduce the effective Gibbs state for the observables averaged with respect to fast free dynamics. We prove that the information loss due to the restriction of our measurement capabilities to such averaged observables is non-negative and discuss a thermodynamic role of it. We show that there are a lot of similarities between this effective Hamiltonian and the mean force Hamiltonian, which suggests a generalization of quantum thermodynamics including both cases. We also perturbatively calculate the effective Hamiltonian and correspondent corrections to the thermodynamic quantities and illustrate it with several examples.

Reply to "Comment on 'Measurability of nonequilibrium thermodynamics in terms of the Hamiltonian of mean force' "

We refute the criticism expressed in a Comment by P. Talkner and P. Hänggi [Phys. Rev. E 102, 066101 (2020)10.1103/PhysRevE.102.066101] on our paper Phys. Rev. E 101, 050101(R) (2020)2470-004510.1103/PhysRevE.101.050101. We first make clear that our paper is free of any technical mistakes. We then defend the statements of our paper which were claimed to be taken out of context. Finally, we give clear arguments showing that the basic concepts we rely on are meaningful and have a deep rational.