English

Carnot process with a single particle

Statistical Mechanics 2015-06-15 v2

Abstract

We determine the statistics of work in isothermal volume changes of a classical ideal gas consisting of a single particle. Combining our results with the findings of Lua and Grosberg [J. Chem. Phys. B 109, 6805 (2005)] on adiabatic expansions and compressions we then analyze the joint probability distribution of heat and work for a microscopic, non-equilibrium Carnot cycle and determine its efficiency at maximum power.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1303.0145,
  title  = {Carnot process with a single particle},
  author = {Johannes Hoppenau and Markus Niemann and Andreas Engel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.0145},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

13 pages, 10 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:34:57.386Z