Sharif Digital Repository

We provide a physically motivated definition for the binding energy (or bond dissociation) of a bipartite quantum system. We consider coherently applying an external field to cancel out the interaction between the subsystems, to break their bond and separate them as systems from which no work can be extracted coherently by any cyclic evolution. The minimum difference between the average energies of the initial and final states obtained this way is defined as the binding energy of the system. We show that the final optimal state is a passive state. We discuss how the required evolution can be realized through a sequence of control pulses. The utility of our definition is illustrated through...