论文标题
混合无法区分的系统会导致量子吉布斯悖论
Mixing indistinguishable systems leads to a quantum Gibbs paradox
论文作者
论文摘要
经典的吉布斯悖论涉及混合两种气体时的熵变化。观察者是否将熵增加到该过程取决于其区分气体的能力。解决方案是，无法区分气体的“无知”观察者无法通过混合来提取工作。将思想实验移入量子领域，我们揭示了新的和令人惊讶的行为：无知的观察者可以从混合不同气体中提取工作，即使气体无法直接区分。此外，在宏观极限中，量子案例与经典的理想气体不同：可以提取大量工作，就好像气体完全可以区分。我们表明，无知的观察者比在半经典统计力学中的天真计数所发现的要为系统分配更多的微晶格。这表明了对观察者的知识水平的计算的重要性，及其对对热力学的真正量子修改的影响。
The classical Gibbs paradox concerns the entropy change upon mixing two gases. Whether an observer assigns an entropy increase to the process depends on their ability to distinguish the gases. A resolution is that an "ignorant" observer, who cannot distinguish the gases, has no way of extracting work by mixing them. Moving the thought experiment into the quantum realm, we reveal new and surprising behaviour: the ignorant observer can extract work from mixing different gases, even if the gases cannot be directly distinguished. Moreover, in the macroscopic limit, the quantum case diverges from the classical ideal gas: as much work can be extracted as if the gases were fully distinguishable. We show that the ignorant observer assigns more microstates to the system than found by naive counting in semiclassical statistical mechanics. This demonstrates the importance of accounting for the level of knowledge of an observer, and its implications for genuinely quantum modifications to thermodynamics.
