Ancilla-assisted measurement of quantum work

PAOLO SOLINAS; A. J. RONCAGLIA; G. DE CHIARA; FEDERICO CERISOLA

Thermodynamics in the quantum regime

Springer International Publishing

Año: 2018; p. 1 - 28

We review the use of an external auxiliary detector for measuring the full distribution of the workperformed on or extracted from a quantum system during a unitary thermodynamic process. Wefirst illustrate two paradigmatic schemes that allow one to measure the work distribution: a Ramseytechnique to measure the characteristic function and a positive operator valued measure (POVM)scheme to directly measure the work probability distribution. Then, we show that these two ideascan be understood in a unified framework for assessing work fluctuations through a generic quantumdetector and describe two protocols that are able to yield complementary information. This allowsus also to highlight how quantum work is affected by the presence of coherences in the system?sinitial state. Finally, we describe physical implementations and experimental realisations of the firsttwo schemes