All steerable quantum correlations can provide thermodynamic advantages in cooling

Abstract

The removal of heat generated during computation poses a major challenge for both classical and quantum information processing. In particular, heat removal is directly linked to a fundamental requirement of quantum computation: the ability to reset a system to a pure state before computation. Efficient cooling is therefore crucial both for advancing our understanding of thermodynamics in the quantum regime and for enabling the development of modern quantum technologies. In this work, we devise a cooling task that exploits steerability, a fundamental form of quantum correlations, to demonstrate a provable quantum advantage over classically correlated scenarios in which steerability is absent. We quantify this advantage by the ratio between the heat removed using steerable quantum correlations and the heat removed using unsteerable classical correlations. Specifically, we show that steerable quantum correlations always provide a thermodynamic advantage in the cooling task. Remarkably, we further establish that the maximum achievable advantage is directly related to a geometric measure of steerability known as steerability robustness. Our results suggest that this thermodynamic advantage can serve as a witness of steerability. Finally, we present examples showing that the advantage can increase with the dimension of the underlying system.