Three heats in strongly coupled system and bath

Abstract

We investigate three kinds of heat produced in a system and a bath strongly coupled via an interaction Hamiltonian. By studying the energy flows between the system, the bath, and their interaction, we provide rigorous definitions of two types of heat, $Q_{\rm S}$ and $Q_{\rm B}$ from the energy loss of the system and the energy gain of the bath, respectively. This is in contrast to the equivalence of $Q_{\rm S}$ and $Q_{\rm B}$, which is commonly assumed to hold in the weak coupling regime. The bath we consider is equipped with a thermostat which enables it to reach an equilibrium. We identify another kind of heat $Q_{\rm SB}$ from the energy dissipation of the bath into the super bath that provides the thermostat. We derive the fluctuation theorems (FT's) with the system variables and various heats, which are discussed in comparison with the FT for the total entropy production. We take an example of a sliding harmonic potential of a single Brownian particle in a fluid and calculate the three heats in a simplified model. These heats are found to equal on average in the steady state of energy, but show different fluctuations at all times.