Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Resource-theoretic approaches to thermodynamics provide powerful, model-independent bounds on the efficiency of physical processes, because they do not rely on microscopic details of the environment. Whether such bounds can be approached by realistic dynamics generated by explicit system-environment interactions remains an open question. Photoisomerization, a fundamental molecular photoreaction, offers a concrete setting to examine this issue. We introduce a tunable microscopic model of a molecular photoswitch coupled to a structured vibrational environment, which interpolates continuously between Markovian and non-Markovian regimes. Resource-theoretic analysis predicts in particular that Markovian Thermal Operations achieve strictly lower yields than general Thermal Operations. We show that environmental memory lifts dynamical restrictions associated with Markovian thermal evolutions, thereby enlarging the set of transformations accessible to the microscopic dynamics. Approaching the thermal operation bound, however, depends on the microscopic coupling structure that generates this memory and directs the resulting dynamics towards the target transformation.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Language: English
Subfield: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204785699