Related papers: The smallest possible heat engines
Considering ideal paramagnetic medium, in this paper we deduced an expression for the thermal efficiency of Carnot heat engine with a paramagnetic gas as working substance. We found that the efficiency depends on the limits of maximum and…
We present a theoretical and numerical analysis of a quantum system that is capable of functioning as a heat engine. This system could be realized experimentally using cold bosonic atoms confined to a double well potential that is created…
Stochastic heat engines are devices that generate work from random thermal motion using a small number of highly fluctuating degrees of freedom. Proposals for such devices have existed for more than a century and include the Maxwell demon…
Machines are only Carnot efficient if they are reversible, but then their power output is vanishingly small. Here we ask, what is the maximum efficiency of an irreversible device with finite power output? We use a nonlinear scattering…
We studied the efficiency of two different schemes for a magnetically driven quantum heat engine, by considering as the working substance a single nonrelativistic particle trapped in a cylindrical potential well, in the presence of an…
We study a class of cyclic Brownian heat engines in the framework of finite-time thermodynamics. For infinitely long cycle times, the engine works at the Carnot efficiency limit producing, however, zero power. For the efficiency at maximum…
We discuss the possibility of reaching the Carnot efficiency by heat engines (HEs) out of quasi-static conditions at nonzero power output. We focus on several models widely used to describe the performance of actual HEs. These models…
Conventional heat engines typically require two distinct thermal reservoirs, with their efficiency strictly bounded by the Carnot limit. We present a theoretical design for a phase-change heat engine that utilizes water as the working fluid…
According to the second law, the efficiency of cyclic heat engines is limited by the Carnot bound that is attained by engines that operate between two thermal baths under the reversibility condition whereby the total entropy does not…
The key question of this paper is whether work can be extracted from a heat engine by using purely quantum mechanical information. If the answer is yes, what is its mathematical formula? First, by using a bipartite memory we show that the…
Quantum heat engines (QHEs) have attracted long-standing scientific interest, especially inspired by considerations of the interplay between heat and work with the quantization of energy levels, quantum superposition, and entanglement.…
We discuss the efficiency of a heat engine operating in a nonequilibrium steady state maintained by two heat reservoirs. Within the general framework of linear irreversible thermodynamics we derive a universal upper bound on the efficiency…
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…
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…
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.…
Developments in the thermodynamics of small quantum systems envisage non-classical thermal machines. In this scenario, energy fluctuations play a relevant role in the description of irreversibility. We experimentally implement a quantum…
We consider quantum heat engines that operate between nonequilibrium stationary reservoirs. We evaluate their maximum efficiency from the positivity of the entropy production and show that it can be expressed in terms of an effective…
We explore the dependence of the performance bounds of heat engines and refrigerators on the initial quantum state and the subsequent evolution of their piston, modeled by a quantized harmonic oscillator. Our goal is to provide a fully…
The widely debated feasibility of thermodynamic machines achieving Carnot efficiency at finite power has been convincingly dismissed. Yet, the common wisdom that efficiency can only be optimal in the limit of infinitely-slow processes…
Miniaturized heat engines constitutes a fascinating field of current research. They are being studied theoretically as well as experimentally, with experiments involving colloidal particles and harmonic traps and even bacterial baths acting…