Fermi's golden rule and the second law of thermodynamics

Abstract

We present a Gedankenexperiment that leads to a violation of detailed balance if quantum mechanical transition probabilities are treated in the usual way by applying Fermi's "golden rule". This Gedankenexperiment introduces a collection of two-level systems that absorb and emit radiation randomly through non-reciprocal coupling to a waveguide, as realized in specific chiral quantum optical systems. The non-reciprocal coupling is modeled by a hermitean Hamiltonian and is compatible with the time-reversal invariance of unitary quantum dynamics. Surprisingly, the combination of non-reciprocity with probabilistic radiation processes entails negative entropy production. Although the considered system appears to fulfill all conditions for Markovian stochastic dynamics, such a dynamics violates the Clausius inequality, a formulation of the second law of thermodynamics. Several implications concerning the interpretation of the quantum mechanical formalism are discussed.

thoroughly revised, 30.5 pages, 9 figures, published online in Foundations of Physics

References in corpus (5)

• Chiral Quantum Optics
• All-Optical Routing of Single Photons by a One-Atom Switch Controlled by a Single Photon
• A chiral Maxwell Demon
• Irreversibility and typicality: A simple analytical result for the Ehrenfest model
• Phase Filters for a Novel Kind of Asymmetric Transport

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Atomic spin-controlled non-reciprocal Raman amplification of fibre-guided light
• Exact description of transport and non-reciprocity in monitored quantum devices
• Decoherence predictions in a superconductive quantum device using the steepest-entropy-ascent quantum thermodynamics framework
• Decoherence Effects Break Reciprocity in Matter Transport
• Asymmetric Transmission Through a Classical Analogue of the Aharonov-Bohm Ring
• Non-unitary Quantum Electronics: Novel Functions from the Edge of the Quantum World