Heat due to system-reservoir correlations in thermal equilibrium

Abstract

The heat flow between a quantum system and its reservoir is analyzed when initially both are in a separable thermal state and asymptotically approach a correlated equilibrium. General findings are illustrated for specific systems and various classes of non-Markovian reservoirs. System-bath correlations are shown to be substantial at low temperatures even in the weak coupling regime. As a consequence, predictions of work and heat for actual experiments obtained within conventional perturbative approaches may often be questionable. Correlations induce characteristic imprints in heat capacities which opens a proposal to measure them in solid state devices.

6 pages, 5 figures minor revisions in the main text. (Ed. suggestion)

References in corpus (6)

• Test of Jarzynski and Crooks fluctuation relations in an electronic system
• Employing trapped cold ions to verify the quantum Jarzynski equality
• Finite quantum dissipation: the challenge of obtaining specific heat
• Mesoscopic Spin-Boson Models of Trapped Ions
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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Performance of a quantum heat engine at strong reservoir coupling
• Energy backflow in strongly coupled non-Markovian continuous-variables systems
• Fluctuations of work in nearly adiabatically driven open quantum systems
• Heat currents in electronic junctions driven by telegraph noise
• Correlated quantum machines beyond the standard second law
• Correlation-Enabled Energy Exchange in Quantum Systems without External Driving
• Comparison between quantum jumps and master equation in the presence of a finite environment
• Calorimetric measurement of work for a driven harmonic oscillator
• Entropy production in a non-Markovian environment