📝 SummarXiv

Abstract

Time-reversal symmetry plays an essential role in the thermodynamic uncertainty relation, which bound the fluctuations of observables in terms of the associated dissipation. In fact, thermodynamic uncertainty relations are typically derived under the assumption that the observable of interest is antisymmetric under time reversal. This also suggests that existing thermodynamic uncertainty relations are restricted to a limited class of observables. In this paper, we mitigate this restriction by introducing a new class of observables that do not exhibit the exact antisymmetry but only change the sign under time reversal. We call it generalized time reversal and derive a broadly applicable thermodynamic uncertainty relation for observables with this condition. The generalization is achieved by direct statistical arguments on the probability distributions of dissipation and the observable, and holds for both deterministic and stochastic dynamics. We demonstrate the derived thermodynamic uncertainty relation in a quantum refrigeration model, showing that the precision of generalized observables remains expressible in terms of the heat-dissipation cost. The result extends the scope of thermodynamic uncertainty relations beyond what was reached by frameworks relying on strong symmetries imposed by fluctuation theorems.