arXiv · 1412.6116
Measuring work and heat in ultracold quantum gases
Abstract
We propose a feasible experimental scheme to direct measure heat and work in cold atomic setups. The method is based on a recent proposal which shows that work is a positive operator valued measure (POVM). In the present contribution, we demonstrate that the interaction between the atoms and the light polarisation of a probe laser allows us to implement such POVM. In this way the work done on or extracted from the atoms after a given process is encoded in the light quadrature that can be measured with a standard homodyne detection. The protocol allows one to verify fluctuation theorems and study properties of the non-unitary dynamics of a given thermodynamic process.
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G. De Chiara, A. J. Roncaglia, J. P. Paz. 2014-12-18. Measuring work and heat in ultracold quantum gases. https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/17/3/035004
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