An approach to study the adiabaticity and irreversibility in the TDHO

Abstract:This work studies the relationship between parametric amplification (or particle creation), adiabaticity and irreversibility in the non-quasi-static regime of a time-dependent quantum harmonic oscillator (TDHO) that evolves unitarily. We provide analytical results for the evolution of the TDHO valid for any functional value of the frequency, which enables us to monitor the behavior of the thermodynamical magnitudes in the non-quasi-static regime. In the latter, the largest modes of the energy eigenstates commonly undergo a process of spontaneous thermalization, where the concept of temperature naturally arises from the unitary evolution of the oscillator, i.e. without relation to any external source of temperature or thermal bath. As the evolution is unitary, this thermalization process can be reversible. We extend the standard definitions of quantum heat and work to account for the change in the populations of the energy levels and relate it to the diagonal entropy to obtain an effective temperature from the associated second principle of thermodynamics. The qualitative behavior of this temperature is similar to the temperature of the largest modes and is only significant in the non quasi-static region, returning to the original value $T\rightarrow 0$ afterwards. This effect is briefly analyzed in the case of a periodically driven quantum system, where the energy eigenstate mixing and the temperature grow and return to the original value periodically.

arXiv:2512.00820 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2512.00820v3 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.00820 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physleta.2026.132089 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources

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