Title: Quantum Thermodynamics with Superconducting Qubits

Abstract: The laws of thermodynamics are fundamental laws of nature that classify energy changes for macroscopic systems as work performed by external driving and heat exchanged with the environment. In the past decades, these principles have been successfully extended to the level of classical trajectories of microscopic systems to account for thermal fluctuations. In particular, experimentally tested generalizations of the second law, known as fluctuation theorems, quantify the occurrence of negative entropy production. The extension of thermodynamics to include quantum fluctuations faces unique challenges such as the proper identification of heat and work and clarification of the role of quantum coherence. I will present experiments that allow us to track heat and work along single quantum trajectories of a superconducting qubit evolving under continuous unitary evolution and measurement. We are able to verify the first law of thermodynamics in that the measured heat and work sum to the total energy change of the quantum system. We then verify the second law of thermodynamics in the form of the Jarzynsky equality by employing a novel quantum feedback loop that cancels the heat exchanged at each point in time with additional work. Our results successfully generalize stochastic thermodynamics to the quantum regime, paving the way for future experimental and theoretical investigations of quantum information and thermodynamics.