The resource theory under conditioned thermal operations

Abstract

The "thermal operations" framework developed in past works is used to model the evolution of microscopic quantum systems in contact with thermal baths. Here we extend this model to bipartite devices with one part acting as a control external to the system--bath setup. We define the operations of such hybrid devices as conditioned thermal operations. We examine the resource under these operations, which we call conditional athermality. In the quasiclassical limit, we quantify this resource and find the conditions for its conversion between different forms.