Relating heat and entanglement in strong-coupling thermodynamics.

Abstract

Explaining the influence of strong coupling in the dynamics of open quantum systems is one of the most challenging issues in the rapidly growing field of quantum thermodynamics. By using a particular definition of heat, we develop an approach to study the thermodynamics in the strong-coupling regime, which takes into account quantum resources such as coherence and entanglement. We apply the method to calculate the time-dependent thermodynamic properties of a system and an environment interacting via the generalized amplitude-damping channel. The results indicate that the transient imbalance between heat dissipated and heat absorbed that occurs in the process is responsible for the generation of system-environment entanglement.