Thermodynamics has shed light on engines, efficiency, and time’s arrow since the
Industrial Revolution. But the steam engines that powered the Industrial Revolution
were large and classical. Much of today’s technology and experiments are small-scale,
quantum, far from equilibrium, and processing information. Nineteenth-century
thermodynamics needs re-envisioning for the 21st century. Guidance has come from the
mathematical and experimental toolkit of quantum information science. Applying
quantum information science to thermodynamics sheds light on fundamental questions
(e.g., how does entanglement spread during quantum thermalization? How can we
distinguish quantum heat from quantum work?) and practicalities (e.g., quantum
refrigerators and the thermodynamic value of coherences). We will overview how
quantum information theory is being used to revolutionize thermodynamics in quantum
steampunk, named for the steampunk genre of literature, art, and cinema that
juxtaposes futuristic technologies with 19th-century settings.
