Work extractability from energy eigenstates under optimized local operations

Abstract: We examine the relationship between the second law of thermodynamics and the energy eigenstates of quantum many-body systems that undergo cyclic unitary evolution. Using a numerically optimized control protocol, we analyze how the work extractability is affected by the integrability of the system. Our findings reveal that, in nonintegrable systems the number of work-extractable energy eigenstates converges to zero, even when the local control operations are optimized. In contrast, in integrable systems, there are exponentially many eigenstates from which positive work can be extracted, regardless of the locality of the control operations. We numerically demonstrate that such a strikingly different behavior can be attributed to the number of athermal energy eigenstates. Our results provide insights into the foundations of the second law of thermodynamics in isolated quantum many-body systems, which are expected to contribute to the development of quantum many-body heat engines.