Calorimetric measurement of quantum work

Understand

To define the work performed on a driven quantum system in a physically sound way has turned out to be a truly non-trivial task, except in some special cases of limited applicability.

• This topic has been in a focus of intense research recently in the attempts to generalize the classical fluctuation relations into the quantum regime.
• Here we propose and demonstrate that a calorimetric measurement gives both a theoretical and experimental tool to test the Jarzynski equality (JE) and other fluctuation relations in a quantum system, and to analyze the distribution of dissipation in them, based on the very principle of conservation of energy.
• We focus on an experimentally feasible two-level system, a superconducting Cooper pair box subject to Landau-Zener interband transitions.