Precision is not limited by the second law of thermodynamics

Abstract

Physical devices operating out of equilibrium are inherently affected by thermal fluctuations, limiting their operational precision. This issue is pronounced at microscopic and especially quantum scales and can only be mitigated by incurring additional entropy dissipation. Understanding this constraint is crucial for both fundamental physics and technological design. For instance, clocks are inherently governed by the second law of thermodynamics and need a thermodynamic flux towards equilibrium to measure time, which results in a minimum entropy dissipation per clock tick. Classical and quantum models and experiments often show a linear relationship between precision and dissipation, but the ultimate bounds on this relationship are unknown. Our theoretical discovery presents an extensible quantum many-body system that achieves clock precision scaling exponentially with entropy dissipation. This finding demonstrates that coherent quantum dynamics can surpass the traditional thermodynamic precision limits, potentially guiding the development of future high-precision, low-dissipation quantum devices.

6 + 14 pages, 9 figures, comments welcome

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• Inertia Tames Fluctuations in Autonomous Stationary Heat Engines
• Current fluctuations in nonequilibrium open quantum systems beyond weak coupling: a reaction coordinate approach
• Memory effects in repeated uses of quantum channels
• A Quantum Mechanical Pendulum Clock
• Quantum detectors as autonomous machines: assessing the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of information acquisition
• Information-thermodynamic bounds on precision in interacting quantum systems