Quantifying entanglement in quantum thermodynamics via separability constraints

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 17 Mar 2026] Quantifying entanglement in quantum thermodynamics via separability constraints Joan Alba, Laura Ares, Jan Sperling, Julien Pinske The role of quantum entanglement in thermodynamical systems remains elusive. Does entanglement result in thermodynamic advantages or does it impose fundamental limitations? Here, we unambiguously quantify the amount of heat and work in a quantum system that is due to the presence of entanglement. This is achieved by constraining the system's non-equilibrium dynamics to separable states, thereby isolating the impact entanglement has on thermodynamic effects. Unlike thermodynamic entanglement measures, which signify a loose connection between entanglement and thermodynamic properties, imposing a constraint constitutes an active intervention into a system -- answering how much of a system's thermodynamics is caused by (not correlated with) its quantumness. We benchmark our theory by applying the constrained dynamics to several multipartite systems, including quantum batteries and quantum refrigerators. Comments: 14 pages, 6 figures Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2603.17078 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2603.17078v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.17078 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Joan Alba [view email] [v1] Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:05:22 UTC (6,514 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-03 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)