Second law of thermodynamics for batteries with vacuum state

Understand

In stochastic thermodynamics work is a random variable whose average is bounded by the change in the free energy of the system.

• In most treatments, however, the work reservoir that absorbs this change is either tacitly assumed or modelled using unphysical systems with unbounded Hamiltonians (i.e.
• the ideal weight).
• In this work we describe the consequences of introducing the ground state of the battery and hence -- of breaking its translational symmetry.