Thermodynamical cost of some interpretations of quantum theory

Cabello, Adán; Gu, Mile; Gühne, Otfried; Larsson, Jan‐Åke; Wiesner, Karoline

doi:10.1103/physreva.94.052127

Cited by 33 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Our framework presently assumes the process evolves autonomously, and that time is divided into discrete steps. These restrictions will need to be lifted, by combining present results with recent generalizations of classical and quantum computational mechanics to continuum time [38,39] and input-dependent regimes [16,40,41]. More generally, such developments will enable a formal study of causal asymmetry in the quantum trajectories formulation of open quantum systems.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…This measure is used to quantify structure in diverse settings [10][11][12], including hidden variable models emulating quantum contextuality [13]. C + also fields thermodynamic significance, having been linked to the minimal heat dissipation in stochastic simulation and the minimal structure a device needs to fully extract free energy from non-equilibrium environments [14][15][16][17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Causal Asymmetry in a Quantum World

et al. 2018

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Causal asymmetry is one of the great surprises in predictive modelling: the memory required to predict the future differs from the memory required to retrodict the past. There is a privileged temporal direction for modelling a stochastic process where memory costs are minimal. Models operating in the other direction incur an unavoidable memory overhead. Here we show that this overhead can vanish when quantum models are allowed. Quantum models forced to run in the less natural temporal direction not only surpass their optimal classical counterparts, but also any classical model running in reverse time. This holds even when the memory overhead is unbounded, resulting in quantum models with unbounded memory advantage.

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Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causal Asymmetry in a Quantum World

et al. 2018

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“…The broader perspective taken here offers new insights into current challenges in quantum thermodynamics by indicating that the statistical mixture may play a bigger role than usually anticipated. It will be interesting to explore implications of this feature on interpretational aspects of quantum theory [78,79].…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantum work in the Bohmian framework

et al. 2018

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At non-zero temperature classical systems exhibit statistical fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities arising from the variation of the system's initial conditions and its interaction with the environment. The fluctuating work, for example, is characterised by the ensemble of system trajectories in phase space and, by including the probabilities for various trajectories to occur, a work distribution can be constructed. However, without phase space trajectories, the task of constructing a work probability distribution in the quantum regime has proven elusive. Here we use quantum trajectories in phase space and define fluctuating work as power integrated along the trajectories, in complete analogy to classical statistical physics. The resulting work probability distribution is valid for any quantum evolution, including cases with coherences in the energy basis. We demonstrate the quantum work probability distribution and its properties with an exactly solvable example of a driven quantum harmonic oscillator. An important feature of the work distribution is its dependence on the initial statistical mixture of pure states, which is reflected in higher moments of the work. The proposed approach introduces a fundamentally different perspective on quantum thermodynamics, allowing full thermodynamic characterisation of the dynamics of quantum systems, including the measurement process.

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“…To do so, the system will need-as they put it-to 'erase information'. Applying Landauer's principle (assumption (iii)), Cabello et al (2016) finally conclude that during this erasure process, heat is dissipated into the environment.…”

Section: Heat Dissipation Between Successive Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the thermodynamical cost of some interpretations of quantum theory

Prunkl

Timpson

2018

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in

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Recently, Cabello et al. (2016) claim to have proven the existence of an empirically verifiable difference between two broad classes of quantum interpretations. On the basis of three seemingly uncontentious assumptions, (i) the possibility of randomly selected measurements, (ii) the finiteness of a quantum system's memory, and (iii) the validity of Landauer's principle, and further, by applying computational mechanics to quantum processes, the authors arrive at the conclusion that some quantum interpretations (including central realist interpretations) are associated with an excess heat cost and are thereby untenable-or at least-that they can be distinguished empirically from their competitors by measuring the heat produced. Here, we provide an explicit counterexample to this claim and demonstrate that their surprising result can be traced back to a lack of distinction between system and external agent. By drawing the distinction carefully, we show that the resulting heat cost is fully accounted for in the external agent, thereby restoring the tenability of the quantum interpretations in question.

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Thermodynamical cost of some interpretations of quantum theory

Cited by 33 publications

References 32 publications

Causal Asymmetry in a Quantum World

Causal Asymmetry in a Quantum World

Quantum work in the Bohmian framework

On the thermodynamical cost of some interpretations of quantum theory

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