Theory of entropy production in quantum many-body systems

This is the main paper summarizing my findings related to the quantum mechanical foundations of thermodynamics. It introduces an observable for the entropy of a quantum many-body system and a prescription to measure its thermodynamic component.

Since the observable is related to the logarithm of the density matrix of a quantum state, it has a corresponfing equation of motion. Fundamental relations in classical non-equilibrium thermodynamics can then be derived by following the simplest consequences of this equation of motion.

The exposition is quite general but, at the end, a practical case is considered: electrical conduction in a metal. I got very excited when I could derive the Joule heating without invoking the rate of change of the energy but purely from entropy-producing microscopic mechanisms.