Nonequilibrium Green's function's approach to the calculation of work statistics

Abstract: The calculation of work distributions in a quantum many-body system is of significant importance and also of formidable difficulty in the field of nonequilibrium quantum statistical mechanics. To solve this problem, inspired by Schwinger-Keldysh formalism, we propose the contour-integral formulation of the work statistics. Based on this contour integral, we show how to do the perturbation expansion of the characteristic function of work (CFW) and obtain the approximate expression of the CFW to the second order of the work parameter for an arbitrary system under a perturbative protocol. We also demonstrate the validity of fluctuation theorems by utilizing the Kubo-Martin-Schwinger condition. Finally, we use noninteracting identical particles in a forced harmonic potential as an example to demonstrate the powerfulness of our approach.