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David Jou, José Casas-Vázquez

About some current frontiers of the second law

This paper provides a concise overview of three current and very active frontiers of the second law of thermodynamics; namely, non-equilibrium macroscopic systems, mesoscopic systems, and systems with quantum correlations. Rather than providing an extensive review of this very wide topic, we sketch some views on the basic ideas of several current explorations of the limits of the second law. Furthermore, we emphasise the relevance of a suitable definition of temperature in non-equilibrium situations to avoid some apparent paradoxes arising in Carnot cycles with driven heat reservoirs with quantum correlations.

Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics, Walter de Gruyter

Print ISSN: 0340-0204
Volume: 29, 12/2004
Pages: 345 - 357

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