Instability of equilibrium states for coupled heat reservoirs at different temperatures

Abstract We consider quantum systems consisting of a “small” system coupled to two reservoirs (called open systems). We show that such systems have no equilibrium states normal with respect to any state of the decoupled system in which the reservoirs are at different temperatures, provided that either the temperatures or the temperature difference divided by the product of the temperatures are not too small. Our proof involves an elaborate spectral analysis of a general class of generators of the dynamics of open quantum systems, including quantum Liouville operators (“positive temperature Hamiltonians”) which generate the dynamics of the systems under consideration.