Related papers: Quantum bath refrigeration towards absolute zero: …
Thermodynamics is a branch of science blessed by an unparalleled combination of generality of scope and formal simplicity. Based on few natural assumptions together with the four laws, it sets the boundaries between possible and impossible…
The first in a long series of papers by John T. Lewis, G. W. Ford and the present author, considered the problem of the most general coupling of a quantum particle to a linear passive heat bath, in the course of which they derived an exact…
We study the fundamental limitations of cooling to absolute zero for a qubit, interacting with a single mode of the electromagnetic field. Our results show that the dynamical Casimir effect, which is unavoidable in any finite-time…
The Brownian motion of a quantum particle in a harmonic confining potential and coupled to a harmonic quantum thermal bath is exactly solvable. It is shown that at low enough temperatures the stationary state is non-Gibbsian due to an…
Quantum circuits interact with the environment via several temperature-dependent degrees of freedom. Yet, multiple experiments to-date have shown that most properties of superconducting devices appear to plateau out at $T\approx 50$ mK --…
The Brownian motion of a harmonically bound quantum particle and coupled to a harmonic quantum bath is exactly solvable. At low enough temperatures the stationary state is non-Gibbsian due to an entanglement with the bath. This happens when…
We investigate, theoretically and experimentally, the thermodynamic performance of a minimal three-qubit heat-bath algorithmic cooling refrigerator. We analytically compute the coefficient of performance, the cooling power and the…
Absorption refrigerators transfer thermal energy from a cold bath to a hot bath without input power by utilizing heat from an additional "work" reservoir. Particularly interesting is a three-level design for a quantum absorption…
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…
In traditional thermodynamics the Carnot cycle yields the ideal performance bound of heat engines and refrigerators. We propose and analyze a minimal model of a heat machine that can play a similar role in quantum regimes. The minimal model…
We investigate the fundamental dimensional limits to thermodynamic machines. In particular we show that it is possible to construct self-contained refrigerators (i.e. not requiring external sources of work) consisting of only a small number…
Landauer's limit on heat dissipation during information erasure is critical as devices shrink, requiring optimal pure-state preparation to minimise errors. However, Nernst's third law states this demands infinite resources in energy, time,…
Pure quantum states play a central role in applications of quantum information, both as initial states for many algorithms and as resources for quantum error correction. Preparation of highly pure states that satisfy the threshold for…
When a physical system is put in contact with a very large thermal bath, it undergoes a dissipative (i.e., an apparently irreversible) process that leads to thermal equilibrium. This dynamical process can be described fully within quantum…
In nature, everything occurs at finite temperature and quantum phase transitions (QPTs) cannot be an exception. Nevertheless, they are still mainly discussed and formulated at zero temperature. We show that the condensation QPTs recently…
Describing matter at near absolute zero temperature requires understanding a system's quantum ground state and the low energy excitations around it, the quasiparticles, which are thermally populated by the system's contact to a heat bath.…
In the classical limit no work is needed to couple a system to a bath with sufficiently weak coupling strength (or with arbitrarily finite coupling strength for a linear system) at the same temperature. In the quantum domain this may be…
A class of autonomous quantum heat baths satisfying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) criteria is proposed. We show that such systems are expected to cause thermal relaxation of much smaller quantum systems coupled to one of…
Thermodynamics is one of the oldest and well-established branches of physics that sets boundaries to what can possibly be achieved in macroscopic systems. While it started as a purely classical theory, it was realized in the early days of…
Absorption refrigerators are autonomous thermal machines that harness the spontaneous flow of heat from a hot bath into the environment in order to perform cooling. Here we discuss quantum realizations of absorption refrigerators in two…