Thomson's formulation of the second law for macroscopic and finite work sources

Armen E. Allahverdyan; Roger Balian; Theo M. Nieuwenhuizen

doi:10.3390/e6010030

,

and

¹

Institute for Theoretical Physics, Valckenierstraat 65, 1018 XE Amsterdam, Netherlands

²

Yerevan Physics Institute, Alikhanian Brothers St. 2, Yerevan 375036, Armenia

³

PhT, CEA-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette cedex, France

^*

Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Entropy2004, 6(1), 30-37;https://doi.org/10.3390/e6010030

This article belongs to the Special Issue Quantum Limits to the Second Law of Thermodynamics

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Abstract

Thomson's formulation of the second law states: no work can be extracted from an equilibrium system through a cyclic process. A simple, general proof is presented for the case of macroscopic sources of work. Next the setup is generalized towards situations, where the corresponding work-source is not macroscopic. It is shown that using such a source one can extract energy from an equilibrium system by means of a cyclic process. However, this extraction is accompanied by an entropy increase of the source, in a manner resembling the Clausius inequality.

Keywords:

second law; work; entropy

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