Approaching Resource-Theoretic Optimal Performance with Structured Environments
Abstract
Resource-theoretic approaches to thermodynamics provide powerful, model-independent bounds on the efficiency of physical processes, because they do not rely on microscopic details of the environment. Whether such bounds can be approached by realistic dynamics generated by explicit system-environment interactions remains an open question. Photoisomerization, a fundamental molecular photoreaction, offers a concrete setting to examine this issue. We introduce a tunable microscopic model of a molecular photoswitch coupled to a structured vibrational environment, which interpolates continuously between Markovian and non-Markovian regimes. Resource-theoretic analysis predicts in particular that Markovian Thermal Operations achieve strictly lower yields than general Thermal Operations. We show that environmental memory lifts dynamical restrictions associated with Markovian thermal evolutions, thereby enlarging the set of transformations accessible to the microscopic dynamics. Approaching the thermal operation bound, however, depends on the microscopic coupling structure that generates this memory and directs the resulting dynamics towards the target transformation.
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BibTeX
@misc{lautenbacher2026approaching,
title = {{Approaching Resource-Theoretic Optimal Performance with Structured Environments}},
author = {Lea Lautenbacher and Giovanni Spaventa and Susana F. Huelga and Martin B. Plenio},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.28488},
eprint = {2608.28488},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28488},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Approaching Resource-Theoretic Optimal Performance with Structured Environments
AU - Lea Lautenbacher
AU - Giovanni Spaventa
AU - Susana F. Huelga
AU - Martin B. Plenio
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.28488
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28488
AB - Resource-theoretic approaches to thermodynamics provide powerful, model-independent bounds on the efficiency of physical processes, because they do not rely on microscopic details of the environment. Whether such bounds can be approached by realistic dynamics generated by explicit system-environment interactions remains an open question. Photoisomerization, a fundamental molecular photoreaction, offers a concrete setting to examine this issue. We introduce a tunable microscopic model of a molecular photoswitch coupled to a structured vibrational environment, which interpolates continuously between Markovian and non-Markovian regimes. Resource-theoretic analysis predicts in particular that Markovian Thermal Operations achieve strictly lower yields than general Thermal Operations. We show that environmental memory lifts dynamical restrictions associated with Markovian thermal evolutions, thereby enlarging the set of transformations accessible to the microscopic dynamics. Approaching the thermal operation bound, however, depends on the microscopic coupling structure that generates this memory and directs the resulting dynamics towards the target transformation.
ER -