Thermodynamic Speed Limits in Isolated Quantum Systems
Abstract
We derive thermodynamic speed limits for isolated quantum systems undergoing finite-time unitary driving. The key ingredient is a set of generalized second-law inequalities: for the Gibbs entropy and for several thermodynamically motivated observational entropies, the entropy production is bounded from below by a function of the Vu--Saito quantum Wasserstein distance between the initial and final coarse-grained states. These inequalities yield lower bounds on the operation time in terms of the average entropy-production rate. We apply the framework to system--bath coarse-graining, local-energy coarse-graining, and diagonal entropy, and illustrate the resulting bounds with numerical and analytically solvable examples. Our results provide a thermodynamic characterization of finite-time state transformations in isolated quantum systems and clarify how coarse-grained entropy production constrains macroscopic reachability.
Related
- Spectral measures and sharpness of quantum speed limits
- Probability bounds on trajectory-level exceedances of quantum speed limits under continuous-measurement feedback
- Quantum speed limits based on quantifiers of quantum-state texture
- Work Extraction Across a Thermodynamic Hierarchy in Quantum Many-Body Systems
- Thermodynamic Uncertainty of Work in Time-Dependently Driven Open Quantum Systems
BibTeX
@misc{kobashi2026thermodynamic,
title = {{Thermodynamic Speed Limits in Isolated Quantum Systems}},
author = {Rikuya Kobashi},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.12520},
eprint = {2609.12520},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12520},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Thermodynamic Speed Limits in Isolated Quantum Systems
AU - Rikuya Kobashi
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/11
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.12520
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12520
AB - We derive thermodynamic speed limits for isolated quantum systems undergoing finite-time unitary driving. The key ingredient is a set of generalized second-law inequalities: for the Gibbs entropy and for several thermodynamically motivated observational entropies, the entropy production is bounded from below by a function of the Vu--Saito quantum Wasserstein distance between the initial and final coarse-grained states. These inequalities yield lower bounds on the operation time in terms of the average entropy-production rate. We apply the framework to system--bath coarse-graining, local-energy coarse-graining, and diagonal entropy, and illustrate the resulting bounds with numerical and analytically solvable examples. Our results provide a thermodynamic characterization of finite-time state transformations in isolated quantum systems and clarify how coarse-grained entropy production constrains macroscopic reachability.
ER -