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arxiv: 1706.02636 · v1 · pith:UPK2Z7BZnew · submitted 2017-06-08 · 🪐 quant-ph · cond-mat.quant-gas

How isolated is enough for an "isolated" system in statistical mechanics?

classification 🪐 quant-ph cond-mat.quant-gas
keywords classicalentropyexpansionlambdadephasingfreeincreaseirreversible
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Irreversible processes are frequently adopted to account for the entropy increase in classical thermodynamics. However, the corresponding physical origins are not always clear, e.g. in a free expansion process, a typical model in textbooks. In this letter, we study the entropy change during free expansion for a particle with the thermal de Broglie wavelength ($\lambda_{T}$) in a one-dimensional square trap with size $L$. By solely including quantum dephasing as an irreversible process, we recover classical result of entropy increase in the classical region ($L\gg\lambda_{T}$), while predict prominent discrepancies in the quantum region ($L\ll\lambda_{T}$) because of non-equilibrium feature of trapped atoms after expansion. It is interesting to notice that the dephasing, though absent in classical system, is critical to clarify mysteries in classical thermodynamics.

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