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arXiv · 1509.07043

Relations between Dissipated Work and Rényi Divergences

Bo-Bo Wei·M. B. Plenio
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Abstract

In this paper, we establish a general relation which directly links the dissipated work done on a system driven arbitrarily far from equilibrium, a fundamental quantity in thermodynamics, and the Rényi divergences, a fundamental concept in information theory. Specifically, we find that the generating function of the dissipated work under an arbitrary time-dependent driving process is related to the Rényi divergences between a non-equilibrium state in the driven process and a non-equilibrium state in its time reversed process. This relation is a consequence of time reversal symmetry in driven process and is universally applicable to both finite classical system and finite quantum system, arbitrarily far from equilibrium.

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Bo-Bo Wei, M. B. Plenio. 2015-09-23. Relations between Dissipated Work and Rényi Divergences. https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630%2Faa579e

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