Work and its fluctuations in a driven quantum system

Abstract

We analyze work done on a quantum system driven by a control field. The average work depends on the whole dynamics of the system, and is obtained as the integral of the average power operator. As a specific example we focus on a superconducting Cooper-pair box forming a two-level system. We obtain expressions for the average work and work distribution in a closed system, and discuss control field and environment contributions to the average work for an open system.

8 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Fluctuation theorems: Work is not an observable
• Fluctuation Theorem for Arbitrary Open Quantum Systems
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• Fluctuation theorems in driven open quantum systems
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