David Wallace - Thermodynamics with and without Irreversibility (BS AS, Feb. 2023)

"Workshop on The Arrow of Time: From Local Systems to the Whole Universe" held in Buenos Aires (Argentina), February 20-23, 2023.

David Wallace (University of Pittsburgh)
- "Thermodynamics with and without reversibility"

Abstract: I provide a general analysis of thermodynamics in the control-theory/resource-theory framework, focusing on the interplay between (i) the level of coarseness of an agent’s control of a system, and (ii) their level of information about the system. I demonstrate that even in the reversible limit where an agent has arbitrarily fine control of a system, and arbitrarily good initial information about its microstate, it is not possible to violate the Second Law. Actual irreversibility results as this limit is replaced by something more realistic.