论文标题
吉布斯与偏光束膜的部分可区分光子混合
Gibbs mixing of partially distinguishable photons with a polarising beamsplitter membrane
论文作者
论文摘要
对于关于两种经典气体混合的思想实验，吉布斯得出的结论是，可以从混合中提取的工作取决于是否可以通过半渗透膜来区分这些气体。也就是说，混合工作是气体的相似性的不连续功能。在这里，我们描述了一种光学机械设置，该设置将吉布斯的思想实验泛化为部分可区分的量子气体。具体而言，我们对偏振梁的相互作用进行建模，该偏光束的相互作用，该相互作用扮演半渗透膜的作用和两个非正交极化的光子气体。我们发现，由气体混合而产生的工作与与微观膜的位移相关的势能有关，并且我们得出了一般的量子混合工作表达式，对任何两个具有相同数量分布的光子气体有效。发现量子混合工作与两种极化气体的区分性不断变化。此外，微观膜上工作的波动变得很重要，我们计算了光子气体的Fock和热状态。我们的发现将Gibbs的混合概括为量子状态，并为新的量子热力学（思想）实验打开了大门，该实验具有具有非正交极化和微观活塞的量子气体，可以区分正交极化。
For a thought experiment concerning the mixing of two classical gases, Gibbs concluded that the work that can be extracted from mixing is determined by whether or not the gases can be distinguished by a semi-permeable membrane; that is, the mixing work is a discontinuous function of how similar the gases are. Here we describe an optomechanical setup that generalises Gibbs' thought experiment to partially distinguishable quantum gases. Specifically, we model the interaction between a polarising beamsplitter, that plays the role of a semi-permeable membrane, and two photon gases of non-orthogonal polarisation. We find that the work arising from the mixing of the gases is related to the potential energy associated with the displacement of the microscopic membrane, and we derive a general quantum mixing work expression, valid for any two photon gases with the same number distribution. The quantum mixing work is found to change continuously with the distinguishability of the two polarised gases. In addition, fluctuations of the work on the microscopic membrane become important, which we calculate for Fock and thermal states of the photon gases. Our findings generalise Gibbs' mixing to the quantum regime and open the door for new quantum thermodynamic (thought) experiments with quantum gases with non-orthogonal polarisations and microscopic pistons that can distinguish orthogonal polarisations.
