Science Daily June 27, 2019
An international team of researchers (Brazil, Germany, Singapore) has experimentally demonstrated the reversal of heat flow for two quantum correlated spins-1/2, initially prepared in local thermal states at different effective temperatures, employing a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance setup. They observed a spontaneous energy flow from the cold to the hot system. This process is enabled by a tradeoff between correlations and entropy that they quantified with information-theoretical quantities. These results highlight the subtle interplay of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and information theory. They further provide a mechanism to control heat on the microscale…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Schematic of the experimental setup. Credit: Nature Communications, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10333-7