【Seminar】"Clock precision and the second law of thermodynamics"

Speaker

Florian Meier, TU-Wien

Title

"Clock precision and the second law of thermodynamics"

Abstract

Physical devices operating out of equilibrium are inherently affected by thermal fluctuations, limiting their operational precision. This issue is pronounced at microscopic and especially quantum scales and can only be mitigated by incurring additional entropy dissipation. Understanding this constraint is crucial for both fundamental physics and technological design. For instance, clocks are inherently governed by the second law of thermodynamics and need a thermodynamic flux towards equilibrium to measure time, which results in a minimum entropy dissipation per clock tick. Classical and quantum models and experiments often show a linear relationship between precision and dissipation, but the ultimate bounds on this relationship are unknown.

In this presentation, I will present our recent theoretical discovery of a quantum many-body system that achieves clock precision scaling exponentially with entropy dissipation. This finding demonstrates that coherent quantum dynamics can surpass the traditional thermodynamic precision limits, showing clocks may not be fundamentally limited by the second law. Moreover, the system we find to exhibit this behavior is robust to imperfections and it is based on an extensible spin-chain model with nearest neighbor interactions, making it a particularly interesting candidate for experimental realization. We conclude the talk with an outlook on possible applications that quantum ticking clocks may have beyond foundational thermodynamic considerations.