MajuLab Seminar by Jiangbin Gong – 22 February 2023

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Jiangbin Gong

Gong Jiangbin received his PhD in theoretical chemical physics in 2001 from the University of Toronto. He was the Henry Croft postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and then a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Chicago before joining NUS in 2006. He won the NUS Faculty of Science “Outstanding Scientist Award” 2016, the Institute of Physics Singapore “World Scientific” Prize and Medal 2016 for outstanding physics research, and the Singapore National Research Foundation Investigatorship Award (class of 2017) for his project on “Quantum control approach to new topological phases of matter”. He is also appointed as Provost’s Chair Professor at the Faculty of Science for the period of July 2020 to June 2023. Gong Jiangbin is a PI of the Centre for Quantum Technologies at NUS and also a member of the Majulab. Since July 2021, Gong Jiangbin has been the Head of the Department of Physics, NUS.

Nonequilibrium Work Fluctuations

Covering some materials published from my group 6-8 years ago, this talk aims to revive and stimulate more thinking and discussions on the physics of work fluctuations in nanoscale thermodynamics, especially on some related open problems. I will start with two principles, namely, principle of minimal work and principle of minimal work fluctuations, applicable to both classical and quantum domains. The first principle provides us an important guideline in designing nanoscale heat engines, for example, in the construction of a quantum analog of the classical Carnot heat engines. The second principle takes us to surprising findings on the limitation of a celebrated work fluctuation theorem, which becomes more serious in the deep quantum regime. To overcome the identified limitation constitutes an exciting research topic in quantum thermodynamics.

MajuLab is an international joint research unit of the CNRS, UCA, SU, NUS and NTU in Singapore (IRL 3654), hosted by CQT and SPMS.