Physics at the FQMT’04 conference

This paper summarizes the recent state of the art of the following topics presented at the FQMT’04 conference: quantum, mesoscopic and (partly) classical thermodynamics; quantum limits to the Second law of thermodynamics; quantum measurement; quantum decoherence and dephasing; mesoscopic and nano-electro-mechanical systems; classical molecular motors, ratchet systems and rectified motion; quantum Brownian motion and quantum motors; physics of quantum computing; and relevant experiments from the nanoscale to the macroscale. To all these subjects an introduction is given and the recent literature is broadly overviewed. The paper contains some 450 references in total.