Journal article
Inadequacy of von Neumann entropy for characterizing extractable work
- Abstract:
- The lack of knowledge that an observer has about a system limits the amount of work it can extract. This lack of knowledge is normally quantified using the Gibbs/von Neumann entropy. We show that this standard approach is, surprisingly, only correct in very specific circumstances. In general, one should use the recently developed smooth entropy approach. For many common physical situations, including large but internally correlated systems, the resulting values for the extractable work can deviate arbitrarily from those suggested by the standard approach. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 598.6KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1088/1367-2630/13/5/053015
Authors
+ Swiss National Science Foundation
More from this funder
- Funding agency for:
- Dahlsten, O
- Grant:
- 200021-119868
- Publisher:
- IOP Publishing
- Journal:
- New Journal of Physics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 13
- Issue:
- 5
- Article number:
- 053015
- Publication date:
- 2011-05-12
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1367-2630
- ISSN:
-
1367-2630
- Language:
-
English
- Pubs id:
-
pubs:162083
- UUID:
-
uuid:2fc9a884-8a6d-456c-b7d6-fab23521452a
- Local pid:
-
pubs:162083
- Source identifiers:
-
162083
- Deposit date:
-
2012-12-19
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft
- Copyright date:
- 2011
- Notes:
- Copyright IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. Authors, their institutions and third parties all have the same rights to reuse articles published in New Journal of Physics in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC-BY) license. This allows the articles to be shared, adapted and made commercial use of subject to appropriate attribution.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record