Experimental implications of new developments in quantum thermodynamic theory

热力学是一种现象学理论，它允许研究宏观物体的平衡性质。基于基本的可测量的量--热和功--它为研究不同形式的能量的转换提供了一个通用的框架。在工业革命之初，为了分析和改进新发明的蒸汽机的性能，它被成功地应用于设计各种有用的设备，从汽车发动机和冰箱到发电厂和太阳能电池。现在，技术进步正日益微型化到纳米级，并进入热涨落与量子涨落竞争的量子区域。然而，支持这些进步的量子热力学过程的详细数学和实践知识并不是很成熟。直到最近，由不同的团体以不同的方法追求的一些理论发展才开始填补这一空白，在非平衡量子涨落关系、单激发热力学和热力学资源理论方面取得了突破。该项目的关键目标是确定这些不同的理论方法是如何结合在一起的，它们意味着什么实验预测，并尽可能将它们推广到一般的量子过程。这是朝着量子热力学统一理论框架迈出的重要一步，该框架可以支撑未来纳米级的技术发展，有望应用于从计算机芯片到医学的各种领域。

Thermodynamics is a phenomenological theory that allows the investigation of equilibrium properties of macroscopic objects. Based on fundamental measurable quantities - heat and work - it provides a universal framework to study the conversion of different forms of energy. Introduced at the beginning of the industrial revolution, to analyse and improve the performance of the newly invented steam engine, it has been successfully applied ever since to design a great variety of useful devices, from car engines and fridges to power plants and solar cells. Now technological progress is increasingly miniaturising to the nanoscale and into the quantum regime where thermal fluctuations compete with quantum fluctuations.Detailed mathematical and practical knowledge of quantum thermodynamic processes that can support these advances is however not well-established. Only recently have a number of theoretical developments, pursued by different communities and with different methods, started to fill this gap with breakthroughs in non-equilibrium quantum fluctuation relations, single shot thermodynamics and thermodynamic resource theory. The key aim of the project is to identify how these disparate theoretical approaches fit together, what experimental predictions they imply, and to generalise them to general quantum processes whenever possible. This is an essential step towards a unified theoretical framework for quantum thermodynamics that can underpin future technological development at the nanoscale that promise to have applications from computer chips to medicine.