Entanglement signature in quantum work statistics in the slow-driving regime

In slowly driven classical systems, work is a stochastic quantity and its probability distribution is known to satisfy the work fluctuation-dissipation relation, which states that the mean and variance of the dissipated work are linearly related. Recently, it was shown that generation of quantum coherence in the instantaneous energy eigenbasis leads to a correction to this linear relation in the slow-driving regime. Here, we go even further by investigating nonclassical features of work fluctuations in setups with more than one system. To do this, we first generalize slow control protocols to encompass multipartite systems, allowing for the generation of quantum correlations during the driving process. Then, focusing on two-qubit systems, we show that entanglement generation leads to a positive contribution to the dissipated work, which is distinct from the quantum correction due to local coherence generation known from previous work. Our results show that entanglement generated during slow control protocols, e.g., as an unavoidable consequence of qubit crosstalk, comes at the cost of increased dissipation. Published by the American Physical Society 2024