Information-Theoretical Bound of the Irreversibility in Thermal Relaxation Processes

We establish that entropy production, which is crucial to the characterization of thermodynamic irreversibility, is obtained through a variational principle involving the Kulback-Leibler divergence. A simple application of this representation leads to an information-theoretical bound on entropy prod...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2019-09, Vol.123 (11), p.1, Article 110603
Main Authors: Shiraishi, Naoto, Saito, Keiji
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Divergence
Entropy (Information theory)
Thermal relaxation
Thermodynamics
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Summary:We establish that entropy production, which is crucial to the characterization of thermodynamic irreversibility, is obtained through a variational principle involving the Kulback-Leibler divergence. A simple application of this representation leads to an information-theoretical bound on entropy production in thermal relaxation processes; this is a stronger inequality than the conventional second law of thermodynamics. This bound is also interpreted as a constraint on the possible path of a thermal relaxation process in terms of information geometry. Our results reveal a hidden universal law inherent to general thermal relaxation processes.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.110603