Local quantum thermal susceptibility.

ABSTRACT: Thermodynamics relies on the possibility to describe systems composed of a large number of constituents in terms of few macroscopic variables. Its foundations are rooted into the paradigm of statistical mechanics, where thermal properties originate from averaging procedures which smoothen out local details. While undoubtedly successful, elegant and formally correct, this approach carries over an operational problem, namely determining the precision at which such variables are inferred, when technical/practical limitations restrict our capabilities to local probing. Here we introduce the local quantum thermal susceptibility, a quantifier for the best achievable accuracy for temperature estimation via local measurements. Our method relies on basic concepts of quantum estimation theory, provi

SUBMITTER: De Pasquale A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5056999 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature