| Grant number: | 12/51589-1 |
| Support Opportunities: | Regular Research Grants |
| Start date: | July 01, 2013 |
| End date: | December 31, 2015 |
| Field of knowledge: | Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics - Condensed Matter Physics |
| Agreement: | NSF and Program on Materials World Network (MWN) |
| Principal Investigator: | Amir Ordacgi Caldeira |
| Grantee: | Amir Ordacgi Caldeira |
| Host Institution: | Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin (IFGW). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil |
| City of the host institution: | Campinas |
Abstract
In the last two decades, important advances have been made in our understanding of how systems at the microscale and nanoscale exchange energy with the environment that they are inevitably embedded in. At the forefront of these advances has been the development of a suite of fluctuation relations that provide precise relationships between í thermodynamic quantities, such as work and free-energy. Importantly, these relations have refined our understanding of the I second law of thermodynamics and irreversibility; and they have yielded new techniques for extracting equilibrium information from systems driven far from equilibrium. However, while these new relations have been tested and utilized with great success in a wide range of classical systems, their experimental verification in quantum systems remains an outstanding challenge. Moreover, there remain questions about how actually to characterize and measure quantities like work for open quantum systems. As quantum and hybrid-quantum technologies continue to be developed for future applications, it thus seems paramount that such basic thermodynamic questions be further investigated to understand the ultimate potential of these technologies. This project seeks to advance the experimental and theoretical study of quantum fluctuation relations. The proposed projects will focus on developing and utilizing state-of-the-art superconducting circuits and qubit technology as a test-bed to directly investigate quantum analogs of classical fluctuation relations like the Jarzynski equality and related questions on the relationship between work and dissipation in the quantum regime. The intellectual merit of this program has several components: It will (1) yield the first experimental efforts to test nonequilibrium fluctuation relations in the quantum limit; (2) provide the first experiments to probe the quantum mechanical nature of work, which has only recently been elucidated theoretically; (3) provide fundamental insight into the nature of dissipation at the nanoscale and the modeling of open quantum systems, most notably in application to non equilibrium fluctuation theorems, which remains an open theoretical question; (4) pave the way for future experimental and theoretical investigations of nano- and microscale devices that would be of broad importance for statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics; for example, we envision extending the approaches developed here for the purpose of simulating or directly investigating the nonequilibrium dynamics of more complex systems, such as metamaterials consisting of arrays of quantum nano- and microscale electronic or mechanical devices; and (5) integrate the efforts of an experimentalist and two theorists who have more than a decade each of experience in their respective fields, which encompass ultrasensitive measurement, superconducting quantum devices, and the modeling of dissipative quantum systems. Given the complementary expertise of the groups involved, the broader impact of this work will be to foment an intense and long-standing international research exchange experience for not only the PI and international collaborators but also for the graduate students and postdocs of the respective research groups. This program would enable us to build upon the respective visits and seminars by the PI and collaborators in recent years at their counterparts' institutions to include exchange of students and further development of topical, student-oriented research tutorials both in the US and abroad. Moreover it would provide direct training to students and at least one postdoc in cutting-edge technologies for exploring quantum physics at the nano- and microscale, including fabrication techniques and low-noise measurement of superconducting devices at ultra- low temperatures; and it would provide direct training to students in advanced theoretical techniques in quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, including the modeling of open quantum systems and nonequilibrium fluctuation theorems. (AU)
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