Thermodynamics and Information at the nanoscale

In the first part of the talk I will report on a nano-scale thermodynamic experiment with heated optically trapped nanospheres in a dilute gas [1]. By developing a new theoretical model that captures the non-equilibrium situation of the particles we were able to measure the surface temperature of the trapped spheres and observe temperature gradients on the nanoscale.
In the second part of the talk I will give a brief overview of quantum thermodynamics theory and discuss the role of coherences and correlations [2].

[1] Nanoscale temperature measurements using non-equilibrium Brownian dynamics of a levitated nanosphere, J. Millen, T. Deesuwan, P. Barker, J. Anders, Nature Nanotechnology 9, 425 (2014).
[2] Coherence and measurement in quantum thermodynamics, P. Kammerlander, J. Anders, arxiv 1502.02673 (2015).