"statistical-mechanical ensembles arise naturally from quantum entanglement"
http://people.physics.anu.edu.au/~tas110/Teaching/Lectures/L5/Material/Lloyd06.pdf a lecture given by Seth Lloyd QUANTUM THERMODYNAMICS Excuse our ignorance Classically, the second law of thermodynamics implies that our knowledge about a system always decreases. A more flattering interpretation connects entropy with entanglement inherent to quantum mechanics. SETH LLOYD is in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139-4307, USA On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 20 Nov 2014, at 02:15, George wrote: > > Hi everyone > > > This post is relevant to a few threads in this list > > “Reversing time = local reversal of thermodynamic arrows?” and “Two > apparently different forms of entropy”. > > > I am sorry that I haven’t posted to this list for a while. I have been > very busy with my work. > > In my latest research I have found that Quantum Mechanics, in particular > the Pauli Exclusion Principle, can be used to go around limitations of > classical physics and break the Second Law. > > > > Papers describing the research are publicly available at > > > > http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/11/4700 > > > > and > > > > > https://sites.google.com/a/entropicpower.com/entropicpower-com/Thermoelectric_Adiabatic_Effects_Due_to_Non-Maxwellian_Carrier_Distribution.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1 > (Currently under review) > > > > Nice to hear from you George. It has been a long time indeed. I will take > a look, but up to now, my computer refuses to open the document ... > > To be frank, I doubt very much that QM could break the Second Law. If you > could sum up the reason here, it would be nice. Take your time (I am also > rather busy those days). > > > Best, > > Bruno > > > > > These papers describe experimentally observed thermoelectric adiabatic > effects (the existence of a voltage without any heat flow, and the > existence of a temperature differential without any input current.) > > > > Here is some background: The story begins with a thermodynamicist of the > nineteenth century, Josef Loschmidt, who challenged Boltzmann and Maxwell > regarding the Second Law. Loschmidt argued that the temperature lapse in > the atmosphere could be used to run a heat engine, thereby violating the > Second Law. Loschmidt was wrong as shall be explained below but it is > instructive to go through his reasoning. Loschmidt argued that the > atmospheric temperature lapse occurs spontaneously, is self renewing and is > due to the decrease in kinetic energy of molecules as they go up against > the gravitational gradient between collisions. Therefore the atmospheric > temperature decreases adiabatically with altitude and could be used to run > a heat engine. > > However, Loschmidt ignored the fact that molecular energies are > distributed over a range of values and that gravity separates the molecules > according to their energy in a fashion analogous to a mass spectrometer > separating particles according to mass. Molecules with greater energy can > reach greater heights. If one assigns a Maxwellian distribution to the > molecules (exponentially decaying function of energy), then any vertical > translation of a group of molecules results in a lowering of their kinetic > energy, corresponding to a left shift of their distribution. After the > distribution is renormalized to account for the lower density at higher > elevation, the original distribution is recovered indicating that the gas > is isothermal, not adiabatic as Loschmidt conjectured. This effect is due > to the exponential nature of the distribution. An addition (of potential > energy) in the exponent corresponds to a multiplication of the amplitude. > So Loschmidt was wrong: the Loschmidt effect (lowering of KE with > altitude) is exactly canceled by the energy separation effect caused by > gravity. However he was only wrong with respect to gases that follow > Maxwell’s distribution. > > > > Electrical carriers in semiconductor materials are Fermions following > Fermi-Dirac statistics and the above argument does not apply to them. When > subjected to a voltage they do develop a temperature gradient. This > temperature differential is hard to observe because it is promptly shorted > by heat phonons. As experiments at Caltech have shown (see my papers), it > can be observed in certain circumstances such as in high Z thermoelectric > materials in which electrical carriers and heat phonons are strongly > decoupled. The Onsager reciprocal of the temperature differential is a > voltage differential which has also been experimentally observed. > > > > The two papers above describe these results in detail. > > > > In summary, quantum mechanics, in particular the Pauli Exclusion > Principle, can be used to bypass classical mechanics in generating > macroscopic effects violating the Second Law. > > Other relevant papers: > > 1) Hanggi and Wehner arXiv:1205.6894 <http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.6894> > show that any violation to the Uncertainty Principle would result in a > violation of the Second Law. This does not contradict my research which > shows use of QM to violate the Second Law. The paper also suggests for > future research the reverse proposition that any violation of the Second > Law would result in a violation of the Uncertainty Principle. This, if > true, would contradict my research. > > 2) Lloyd, Seth, > http://people.physics.anu.edu.au/~tas110/Teaching/Lectures/L5/Material/Lloyd06.pdf. > This paper discusses derivation of 2nd Law from QM. > > > I welcome any comment or criticism that you may have. > > > George Levy > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
