Thermodynamic Reverse Bounds for General Open Quantum Processes

Various quantum thermodynamic bounds are shown to stem from a single tighter and more general inequality, consequence of the operator concavity of the logarithmic function. Such an inequality, which we call the “thermodynamic reverse bound”, is compactly expressed as a quantum relative entropy, from which it inherits mathematical properties and meaning. As concrete examples, we apply our bound to evaluate the thermodynamic length for open processes, the heat exchange in erasure processes, and the maximal energy outflow in general quantum evolutions.