Related papers: Cooling classical particles with a microcanonical …
In the general case of a many-body Hamiltonian system, described by an autonomous Hamiltonian $H$, and with $K\geq 0$ independent conserved quantities, we derive the microcanonical thermodynamics. By a simple approach, based on the…
The quantum-mechanical and thermodynamic properties of a 3-level molecular cooling cycle are derived. An inadequacy of earlier models is rectified in accounting for the spontaneous emission and absorption associated with the coupling to the…
Micro-channel cooling initially aiming at small-sized high-power integrated circuits is being transferred to the field of high energy physics. Today`s prospects of micro-fabricating silicon opens a door to a more direct cooling of detector…
A 1929 Gedankenexperiment proposed by Szil\'ard, often referred to as "Szil\'ard's engine", has served as a foundation for computing fundamental thermodynamic bounds to information processing. While Szil\'ard's original box could be…
We have performed multicanonical computer simulations of a small system of short protein-like heteropolymers and found that their aggregation transition possesses similarities to first-order phase separation processes. Not being a phase…
We consider thermalization of a microscopic quantum system by interaction with a thermal bath. Our interest is the minimal size the bath can have while still being able to thermalize the system. Within a specific thermalization scheme we…
Two approaches to describe the thermodynamics of a subsystem that interacts with a thermal bath are considered. Within the first approach, the mean system energy $E_{S}$ is identified with the expectation value of the system Hamiltonian,…
Heat engines extract work by running cyclically between two heat reservoirs. When the two reservoirs are thermal and at different temperatures, the maximum efficiency of the engine is given by the Carnot limit. Here we consider a quantum…
The quantum engine cycle serves as an analogous representation of the macroscopic nature of heat engines and the quantum regime of thermal devices composed of a single element. In this work, we follow the formalism of a quantum engine…
The Carnot cycle is a prototype of ideal heat engine to draw mechanical energy from the heat flux between two thermal baths with the maximum efficiency, dubbed as the Carnot efficiency $\eta_{\mathrm{C}}$. Such efficiency can only be…
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…
Micro-to-nano scale thermal devices that operate under large thermal fluctuations, are an active field of research where instead the average values, the full distributions of thermodynamic quantities are important. Here we study a model of…
Optimization of cyclic stochastic heat engines, a topic spanning decades of research, commonly assumes fixed control or response parameters at discrete points in the cycle-a limitation that often leads to experimentally impractical…
We discuss whether, and under which conditions, it is possible to realize a heat engine simply by dynamically modulating the couplings between the quantum working medium and thermal reservoirs. For that purpose, we consider the paradigmatic…
We introduce a class of quantum heat engines which consists of two-energy-eigenstate systems, the simplest of quantum mechanical systems, undergoing quantum adiabatic processes and energy exchanges with heat baths, respectively, at…
Microcanonical statistics can be well applied to non-extensive systems like nuclei, atomic clusters and systems at phase transitions of first order with inhomogeneous configurations like phase separation. No thermodynamic limit has to be…
Active matter constantly dissipates energy to power the self-propulsion of its microscopic constituents. This opens the door to designing innovative cyclic engines without any equilibrium equivalent. We offer a consistent thermodynamic…
We introduce a deterministic chaotic system---the Szilard Map---that encapsulates the measurement, control, and erasure protocol by which Maxwellian Demons extract work from a heat reservoir. Implementing the Demon's control function in a…
Classical thermodynamics aimed to quantify the efficiency of thermodynamic engines by bounding the maximal amount of mechanical energy produced compared to the amount of heat required. While this was accomplished early on, by Carnot and…
We propose employing a quantum heat engine as a sensitive probe for thermal baths. In particular, we study a single-atom Otto engine operating in an open thermodynamic cycle. Owing to its cyclic nature, the engine is capable of translating…