Joule expansion of a pure many-body state
arXiv:0803.2439 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.180401
Abstract
We derive the Joule expansion of an isolated perfect gas from the principles of quantum mechanics. Contrary to most studies of irreversible processes which consider composite systems, the gas many-body Hilbert space cannot be factorised into Hilbert spaces corresponding to interesting and ignored degrees of freedom. Moreover, the expansion of the gas into the entire accessible volume is obtained for pure states. Still, the number particle density is characterised by a chemical potential and a temperature. We discuss the special case of a boson gas below the Bose condensation temperature.
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- Quantum Joule Expansion of One-Dimensional Systems
- Sudden change of the thermal contact between two quantum systems
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- Entanglement dynamics of a hard-core quantum gas during a Joule expansion