Coherent energy fluctuation theorems: theory and experiment

Abstract

Heat, work and entropy production: the statistical distribution of such quantities are constrained by the fluctuation theorems (FT), which reveal crucial properties about the nature of non-equilibrium dynamics. In this paper we report theoretical and experimental results regarding two FT for a new quantity, named coherent energy, which is an energy form directly associated with the coherences of the quantum state. We also demonstrate that this quantity behaves as a thermodynamic arrow of time for unitary evolutions, that is, in the absence of entropy production. The experiment is implemented in an all-optical setup in which the system is encoded in the polarization of one photon of a pair. The FT are demonstrated using the two-point measurement protocol, executed using the other photon of the pair, allowing to assess the probability distributions directly from the outcomes of the experiment.