English

Universal Coherence-Induced Power Losses of Quantum Heat Engines in Linear Response

Statistical Mechanics 2017-10-27 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Quantum Physics

Abstract

We introduce a universal scheme to divide the power output of a periodically driven quantum heat engine into a classical contribution and one stemming solely from quantum coherence. Specializing to Lindblad-dynamics and small driving amplitudes, we derive general upper bounds on both, the coherent and the total power. These constraints imply that, in the linear-response regime, coherence inevitably leads to power losses. To illustrate our general analysis, we explicitly work out the experimentally relevant example of a single-qubit engine.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1703.02464,
  title  = {Universal Coherence-Induced Power Losses of Quantum Heat Engines in Linear Response},
  author = {Kay Brandner and Michael Bauer and Udo Seifert},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.02464},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

7+4 pages, 2 figures