Irreversibility, Loschmidt echo, and thermodynamic uncertainty relation

Abstract

Entropy production characterizes irreversibility. This viewpoint allows us to consider the thermodynamic uncertainty relation, which states that a higher precision can be achieved at the cost of higher entropy production, as a relation between precision and irreversibility. Considering the original and perturbed dynamics, we show that the precision of an arbitrary counting observable in continuous measurement of quantum Markov processes is bounded from below by Loschmidt echo between the two dynamics, representing the irreversibility of quantum dynamics. When considering particular perturbed dynamics, our relation leads to several thermodynamic uncertainty relations, indicating that our relation provides a unified perspective on classical and quantum thermodynamic uncertainty relations.