Researchers resolved the apparent paradox between quantum mechanics and classical thermodynamics by demonstrating that while von Neumann entropy remains constant in quantum systems, Shannon entropy increases over time just as classical entropy does, thereby reconciling quantum theory with the second law of thermodynamics.
Heat and computers do not mix well. If computers overheat, they do not work well or may even crash. But what about the quantum computers of the future? These high-performance devices are even more sensitive to heat. This is because their basic computational units — quantum bits or “qubits” — are based on highly-sensitive units, some of them individual atoms, and heat can be a crucial interference factor.
Two seemingly different areas of physics are related in subtle ways: Quantum theory and thermodynamics. How can the laws of thermodynamics arise from the laws of quantum physics? This question has now been pursued with computer simulations, which showed that chaos plays a crucial role: Only where chaos prevails do the well-known rules of thermodynamics follow from quantum physics.