Abstract
© 2015 American Physical Society. Passive states are defined as those states that do not allow for work extraction in a cyclic (unitary) process. Within the set of passive states, thermal states are the most stable ones: they maximize the entropy for a given energy, and similarly they minimize the energy for a given entropy. Here we find the passive states lying in the other extreme, i.e., those that maximize the energy for a given entropy, which we show also minimize the entropy when the energy is fixed. These extremal properties make these states useful to obtain fundamental bounds for the thermodynamics of finite-dimensional quantum systems, which we show in several scenarios.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 042147 |
Journal | Physical Review E - Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics |
Volume | 92 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 22 Oct 2015 |