Thermodynamical path integral and emergent symmetry.

Abstract

We investigate a thermally isolated quantum many-body system with an external control represented by a step protocol of a parameter. The propagator at each step of the parameter change is described by thermodynamic quantities under some assumptions. For the time evolution of such systems, we formulate a path integral over the trajectories in the thermodynamic state space. In particular, for quasistatic operations, we derive an effective action of the thermodynamic entropy and its canonically conjugate variable. Then, the symmetry for the uniform translation of the conjugate variable emerges in the path integral. This leads to the entropy as a Noether invariant in quantum mechanics.