Seminar Schedule
Find upcoming seminars below. All talks are also announced via our mailing list and are also available via a google calendar (ical). Previous talks as well as a copy of the slides will be made available for the foreseeable future on the VIDEOS page.
Summer Break
The Quantum Science Seminar will take a Summer break during August. We will be back in early September.
Thu 2022-09-01 17:00 CEST
Quantum Science Seminar #68: Quantum Thermodynamics
NIST, JQI, U. Maryland
Gaithersburg — Maryland — USA
Gaithersburg — Maryland — USA
Quantum steampunk: Quantum information meets thermodynamics
Thermodynamics has shed light on engines, efficiency, and time’s
arrow since the Industrial Revolution. But the steam engines
that powered the Industrial Revolution were large and classical.
Much of today’s technology and experiments are small-scale,
quantum, far from equilibrium, and processing information.
Nineteenth-century thermodynamics needs re-envisioning for the
21st century. Guidance has come from the mathematical toolkit of
quantum information theory. Applying quantum information theory
to thermodynamics sheds light on fundamental questions (e.g.,
how does entanglement spread during quantum thermalization? How
can we distinguish quantum heat from quantum work?) and
practicalities (e.g., quantum engines and the thermodynamic
value of coherences). I will overview how quantum information
theory is being used to revolutionize thermodynamics in quantum
steampunk, named for the steampunk genre of literature, art, and
cinema that juxtaposes futuristic technologies with 19th-century
settings.