Physical Review E 2017-07-19

Production rate of the system-bath mutual information

Sheng-Wen Li (李圣文)

Index: 10.1103/PhysRevE.96.012139

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Abstract

When an open system comes into contact with several thermal baths, the entropy produced by the irreversible processes (dSi=dS−∑α đQα/Tα) keeps increasing, and this entropy production rate is always non-negative. However, when the system comes into contact with nonthermal baths containing quantum coherence or squeezing, this entropy production formula does not apply. In this paper, we study the increasing rate of mutual information between an open system and its environment. In the case of canonical thermal baths, we prove that this mutual information production rate could return exactly to the previous entropy production rate. Furthermore, we study an example of a single boson mode that comes into contact with multiple squeezed thermal baths, where the conventional entropy production rate does not apply, and we find that this mutual information production rate remains non-negative, which indicates a monotonic increase in the correlation between the system and its environment.