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The efficient conversion of thermal energy to mechanical work by a heat engine is an ongoing technological challenge. Since the pioneering work of Carnot, it is known that the efficiency of heat engines is bounded by a fundamental upper…

In a quantum Stirling heat engine, the heat exchanged with two thermal baths is partly utilized for performing work by redistributing the energy levels of the working substance. We analyze the thermodynamics of a quantum Stirling engine…

We study the thermoelectric properties and heat-to-work conversion performance of an interacting, multi-level quantum dot (QD) weakly coupled to electronic reservoirs. We focus on the sequential tunneling regime. The dynamics of the charge…

We identify the operational conditions for maximum power of a nanothermoelectric engine consisting of a single quantum level embedded between two leads at different temperatures and chemical potentials. The corresponding thermodynamic…

Heat engines and information engines have each historically served as motivating examples for the development of thermodynamics. While these two types of systems are typically thought of as two separate kinds of machines, recent empirical…

We present a unified perspective on nonequilibrium heat engines by generalizing nonlinear irreversible thermodynamics. For tight-coupling heat engines, a generic constitutive relation of nonlinear response accurate up to the quadratic order…

The stochastic efficiency of effusion as a thermal engine is investigated within the framework of stochastic thermodynamics. Explicit results are obtained for the probability distribution of the efficiency both at finite times and in the…

A quantum heat engine of a specific type is studied. This engine contains a single particle confined in the infinite square well potential with variable width and consists of three processes: the isoenergetic process (which has no classical…

We propose a scheme for a quantum thermal machine made by atoms interacting with a single non-equilibrium electromagnetic field. The field is produced by a simple configuration of macroscopic objects held at thermal equilibrium at different…

Sadi Carnot's theorem regarding the maximum efficiency of heat engines is considered to be of fundamental importance in thermodynamics. This theorem famously states that the maximum efficiency depends only on the temperature of the heat…

We show theoretically that a thermoelectric heat engine, operating exclusively due to quantum-mechanical interference, can reach optimal linear-response performance. A chiral edge state implementation of a close-to-optimal heat engine is…

We introduce a new quantum heat engine, in which the working medium is a quantum system with a discrete level and a continuum. Net work done by this engine is calculated and discussed. The results show that this quantum heat engine behaves…

Thermodynamics places a limit on the efficiency of heat engines, but not on their output power or on how the power and efficiency change with the engine's cycle time. In this manuscript, we develop a geometrical description of the power and…

Situations where a spontaneous process of energy or matter transfer is enhanced by an external device are widespread in nature (human sweating system, enzyme catalysis, facilitated diffusion across bio-membranes, industrial heat…

We retrospect three abstract models for heat engines which include a classic abstract model in textbook of thermal physics, a primary abstract model for finite-time heat engines, and a refined abstract model for finite-time heat engines.…

We introduce an alternative route for obtaining reliable cyclic engines, based on interacting Brownian particles under time-periodic drivings. General expressions for the thermodynamic fluxes, such as power and heat, are obtained using the…

The optimal power performance of a first principle quantum heat engine model shows friction-like phenomena when the internal fluid Hamiltonian does not commute with the external control field. The model is based on interacting…

Conventional continuous quantum heat engines with incoherent heat transfer perform poorly as they exploit two-body interactions between the system and hot or cold baths, thus having limited capability to outperform their classical…

The Carnot statement of the second law of thermodynamics poses an upper limit on the efficiency of all heat engines. Recently, it has been studied whether generic quantum features such as coherence and quantum entanglement could allow for…

The introduction of the quantum analogue of a Carnot engine based on a bath comprising of particles with a small amount of coherence initiated an active line of research on the harnessing of different quantum resources for the enhancement…