• The Foundations of Physics @Harvard series is co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy
• This is a free Zoom event (no registration fee)
• The meeting ID and password will be shared with those who register
• Each talk will be 1 hour, followed by a 5-minute break and then 25 minutes for questions
• You can find more events in this series in the navigation panel on the left
• You can visit the YouTube channel here
Questions or comments: Jacob Barandes, harvardfop@jacobbar∗∗∗∗∗.com (organizer)
Thermodynamics reigns as queen of the physical theories, governing everything from biophysics to cosmology. The second law of thermodynamics heads her court, stipulating that time appears to flow in only one direction and limiting engines’ efficiencies. However, idealizations curtail the original second law’s applicability: small systems violate simple, early formulations of the law, which imply quantitative predictions only about equilibrium states. The nineteenth-century law has been tightened, including within quantum thermodynamics, a field that has taken off in the past decade. I will illustrate this progress with examples. As a spoiler alert: I know of no ways to leverage quantum phenomena to break the second law. However, quantum and other resources enable us to “bend around” the second law: we can appear to violate the law while, in fact, subtly avoiding assumptions behind modern formulations of the law.