Abstract: We expand the standard thermodynamic framework of a system coupled to a thermal reservoir by considering a stream of independently prepared units repeatedly put into contact with the system. These units can be in any nonequilibrium state and interact with the system with an arbitrary strength and duration. We show that this stream constitutes an effective resource of nonequilibrium free energy and identify the conditions under which it behaves as a heat, work or information reservoir. We also show that this setup provides a natural framework to...
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Topics: 
Statistical physics
Quantum mechanics