English

Optimal energy conversion through anti-adiabatic driving breaking time-reversal symmetry

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2021-03-17 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

Starting with Carnot engine, the ideal efficiency of a heat engine has been associated with quasi-static transformations and vanishingly small output power. Here, we exactly calculate the thermodynamic properties of a isothermal heat engine, in which the working medium is a periodically driven underdamped harmonic oscillator, focusing instead on the opposite, anti-adiabatic limit, where the period of a cycle is the fastest time scale in the problem. We show that in that limit it is possible to approach the ideal energy conversion efficiency η=1\eta=1, with finite output power and vanishingly small relative power fluctuations. The simultaneous realization of all the three desiderata of a heat engine is possible thanks to the breaking of time-reversal symmetry. We also show that non-Markovian dynamics can further improve the power-efficiency trade-off.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.10904,
  title  = {Optimal energy conversion through anti-adiabatic driving breaking time-reversal symmetry},
  author = {Loris Maria Cangemi and Matteo Carrega and Antonio De Candia and Vittorio Cataudella and Giulio De Filippis and Maura Sassetti and Giuliano Benenti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.10904},
  year   = {2021}
}