Related papers: Thermal noise engines
A quantum model of a heat engine resembling the Otto cycle is employed to explore strategies to suppress frictional losses. These losses are caused by the inability of the engine's working medium to follow adiabatically the change in the…
A quantum engine fueled by quantum measurement is proposed. Under the finite-time adiabatic driving regime, the conversion of heat to work is realized without the compression and expansion of the resonance frequency. The work output,…
At the very foundation of the second law of thermodynamics lies the fact that no heat engine operating between two reservoires of temperatures $T_C\leq T_H$ can overperform the ideal Carnot engine: $\langle W \rangle / \langle Q_H \rangle…
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 efficiency of cyclic heat engines is limited by the Carnot bound. This bound follows from the second law of thermodynamics and is attained by engines that operate between two thermal baths under the reversibility condition whereby the…
Quantum coherence has been shown to impact the operational capabilities of quantum systems performing thermodynamic tasks in a significant way, and yet the possibility and conditions for genuine coherence-enhanced thermodynamic operation…
We consider a quantum engine driven by repeated weak interactions with a heat bath of identical three-level atoms. This model was first introduced by Scully et al. [Science, 2003], who showed that coherence between the energy-degenerate…
When two resonantly interacting modes are in contact with a thermostat, their statistics is exactly Gaussian and the modes are statistically independent despite strong interaction. Considering noise-driven system, we show that when one mode…
The efficiency of macroscopic heat engines is restricted by the second law of thermodynamics. They can reach at most the efficiency of a Carnot engine. In contrast, heat currents in mesoscopic heat engines show fluctuations. Thus, there is…
We analyze an autonomous thermoelectric engine composed of two superconducting qubits coupled to separate heat baths and connected by a Josephson junction. Work and heat are process quantities and not observables of the engine quantum…
We review a family of models recently introduced to describe Brownian motors under the influence of Coulomb friction, or more general non-linear friction laws. It is known that, if the heat bath is modeled as the usual Langevin equation…
Continuous particle exchange thermal machines require no time-dependent driving, can be realised in solid-state electronic devices, and miniaturised to nanometre scale. Quantum dots, providing a narrow energy filter and allowing to…
The efficiency of small thermal machines is typically a fluctuating quantity. We here study the efficiency large deviation function of two exemplary quantum heat engines, the harmonic oscillator and the two-level Otto cycles. While the…
According to the laws of thermodynamics, no heat engine can beat the efficiency of a Carnot cycle. This efficiency traditionally comes with vanishing power output and practical designs, optimized for power, generally achieve far less.…
A central building block of a heat engine is the working fluid, which mediates the conversion of heat into work. In nanoscale heat engines, the working fluid can be a quantum system whose behavior and dynamics are non-classical. A…
We study a thermal engine model for which Newton's cooling law is obeyed during heat transfer processes. The thermal efficiency and its bounds at maximum output power are derived and discussed. This model, though quite simple, can be…
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…
Producing a large current typically requires large dissipation, as is the case in electric conduction, where Joule heating is proportional to the square of the current. Stochastic thermodynamics offers a framework to study nonequilibrium…
Electronic circuits are built by combining components with known current/voltage characteristics, which are intrinsic to each component and independent of the rest of the circuit. This approach breaks down for nanostructures placed at…
A cyclic thermodynamic heat engine runs most efficiently if it is reversible. Carnot constructed such a reversible heat engine by combining adiabatic and isothermal processes for a system containing an ideal gas. Here, we present an example…