Signatures of coherent initial ensembles on all work moments
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2602.00227 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 30 Jan 2026] Title:Signatures of coherent initial ensembles on all work moments Authors:Pranay Nayak, Sreenath K. Manikandan, Tan Van Vu, Supriya Krishnamurthy View a PDF of the paper titled Signatures of coherent initial ensembles on all work moments, by Pranay Nayak and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Standard treatments of quantum work using projective energy measurements erase initial coherence and alter the dynamics, thereby failing to capture the thermodynamic effects of coherent superpositions of energy eigenstates in an ensemble of initial states. In this article, we use an operational work definition that is non-intrusive, applying it to the case of a driven dissipative qubit, where the qubit's initial preparation comprises coherent superposition states, while the driving is coherence-less. We derive an evolution equation for the moment generating function for this work, faithfully capturing the thermodynamic signature of coherent superpositions in the initial ensemble. We demonstrate that different initial ensembles that correspond to the same density matrix upon ensemble average, while having the same average work, display different work fluctuations. For monotonic driving, we show that fluctuations are maximum for coherence-less initial ensembles. As an application, we consider quantum bit-erasure in finite time and demonstrate significantly different work statistics for erasing a classical bit of information versus a Haar random initial ensemble. Our results indicate that coherence in the initial ensemble can be utilized as a resource for thermodynamic precision without incurring additional dissipative work costs. We also obtain a generalized fluctuation theorem that establishes a new quantum lower bound on the mean dissipated work. This bound, counterintuitively, is also applicable to a "classical" initial ensemble with the same initial density matrix and is connected to quantum absolute irreversibility. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) Cite as: arXiv:2602.00227 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2602.00227v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.00227 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Pranay Nayak [view email] [v1] Fri, 30 Jan 2026 19:00:01 UTC (442 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Signatures of coherent initial ensembles on all work moments, by Pranay Nayak and 3 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-02 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.stat-mech References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)