Termodinâmica e informação em redes quânticas lineares

Abstract

When a quantum system is coupled to several heat baths at different temperatures, it eventually reaches a non-equilibrium steady state (NESS) featuring stationary internal heat currents. From one side, these currents are responsible to cause decorehence and produce entropy in the system. However, their existence also induce correlations between different parts of the system. In this work, we explore this two-folded aspect of NESSs. Using phase-space techniques we calculate the Wigner entropy production on general linear networks of harmonic nodes. Working in the ubiquitous limit of weak internal coupling and weak dissipation, we obtain simple closedform expressions for the entropic contribution of each individual quasi-probability current. Our analysis also shows that, it is exclusively the (reversible) internal dynamics which maintain the stationary (irreversible) entropy production. From the informational point of view, we address how to quantify the amount of information that disconnected parts of a quantum chain share in a non-equilibrium steady-state. As we show, this is more precisely captured by the conditional mutual information (CMI), a more general quantifier of tripartite correlations than the usual mutual information. As an application, we apply our framework to the paradigmatic problem of energy transfer through a chain of oscillators subject to self-consistent internal baths that can be used to tune the transport from ballistic to diffusive. We find that the entropy production scales with different power law behaviors in the ballistic and diffusive regimes, hence allowing us to quantify what is the "entropic cost of diffusivity". We also compute the CMI for arbitrary sizes and thus find the scaling rules connecting information sharing and diffusivity. Finally, we discuss how this new perspective in the characterization of non-equilibrium systems may be applied to understand the issue of local equilibration in non-equilibrium states.