Energetic Footprints of Irreversibility in the Quantum Regime

This paper investigates the energetic footprints of irreversibility in quantum thermodynamic processes, focusing on the impact of decoherence on work extraction and heat exchange. Using quantum trajectories, the authors analyze distributions of classical and quantum heat, revealing that the heat footprint of quantum irreversibility differs significantly from the classical case. They quantify how quantum irreversibility reduces extractable work from coherent states, highlighting the importance of both entropic and energetic footprints for optimizing quantum operations at low temperatures.

M. H. Mohammady, A. Auffèves, J. Anders