Work Statistics via Real-Time Effective Field Theory: Application to Work Extraction from Thermal Bath with Qubit Coupling

Abstract: Quantum thermal states are known to be passive, as required by the second law of thermodynamics. This paper studies the possible work extraction via coupling the thermal bath to a qubit of either spin, fermion, or topological types, which acts as a quantum thermal state at different temperatures. The amount of work extraction is derived from the work statistics under a cyclic nonequilibrium process. Though the work statistics of many-body systems are known to be challenging to calculate explicitly, we propose an effective field theory approach to tackle this problem by assuming the externally driven source to couple to a specific quasiparticle operator of the thermal state. We show that the work statistics can be expressed succinctly in terms of this quasiparticle's thermal spectral function. We obtain the non-perturbative work distribution function (WDF) for the pure thermal bath without the qubit coupling. With qubit coupling, we get the second-order WDF, from which the physical regime of work extraction can be pinned down precisely to help devise quantum engines.