Derivation of quantum work equalities using a quantum Feynman-Kac formula

Abstract

On the basis of a quantum mechanical analog of the famous Feynman-Kac formula, we present a method to derive nonequilibrium work equalities for isolated quantum systems, which include the Jarzynski equality and Bochkov-Kuzovlev equality. Compared with other methods in the literature, our method shows a higher similarity in form to the method deriving the fluctuation relations in the classical systems.