Related papers: Efficiency of the general quantum-mechanical Carno…
A heat engine operating in the one-shot finite-size regime, where systems composed of a small number of quantum particles interact with hot and cold baths and are restricted to one-shot measurements, delivers fluctuating work. Further,…
Work extraction from a heat engine in a cycle by a quantum mechanical device (quantum "piston") is analyzed. The standard definition of work fails in the quantum domain. The correct extractable work and its efficiency bound are shown to…
The efficiency of any heat engine, defined as the ratio of average work output to heat input, is bounded by Carnot's celebrated result. However, this measure is insufficient to characterize the properties of miniaturized heat engines…
If the work per cycle of a quantum heat engine is averaged over an appropriate prior distribution for an external parameter $a$, the work becomes optimal at Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency. More general priors of the form $\Pi(a) \propto…
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…
Relativistic quantum systems exhibit unique features not present at lower energies, such as the existence of both particles and antiparticles, and restrictions placed on the system dynamics due to the light cone. In order to understand what…
We propose quantum engines powered entirely by the quantum measurement process. Our theoretical construction of the engine requires no work from the system Hamiltonian, and takes energy only from the process of observation to move a…
A dynamical model of a highly efficient heat engine is proposed, where an applied temperature difference maintains the motion of particles around the circuit consisting of two asymmetric narrow channels, in one of which the current flows…
We study a quantum thermal engine model for which the heat transfer law is determined by Einstein's theory of radiation. The working substance of the quantum engine is assumed to be a two-level quantum systems of which the constituent…
We derive an efficiency bound for continuous quantum heat engines absorbing heat from squeezed thermal reservoirs. Our approach relies on a full-counting statistics description of nonequilibrium transport and it is not limited to the…
The unavoidable irreversible losses of power in a heat engine are found to be of quantum origin. Following thermodynamic tradition a model quantum heat engine operating by the Otto cycle is analyzed. The working medium of the model is…
We study two-dimensional quantum Carnot engines of spherical symmetry by considering the case of a particle on the surface of a sphere of changing radius. The Carnot cycle is built allowing the state of the system to change with the…
After a brief historical perspective, we introduce the key notions of work and heat for quantum systems, to then apply them to quantum engines operating on quantum Otto and Carnot cycles. The irreversible and dissipative character of the…
Achieving the Carnot efficiency at finite power is a challenging problem in heat engines due to the trade-off relation between efficiency and power that holds for general heat engines. It is pointed out that the Carnot efficiency at finite…
The constraint relation for efficiency and power is crucial to design optimal heat engines operating within finite time. We find a universal constraint between efficiency and output power for heat engines operating in the low-dissipation…
Quantum heat cycles and quantum refrigerators are analyzed using various quantum systems as their working mediums. For example, to evaluate the efficiency and the work done of the Carnot cycle in the quantum regime, one can consider the…
One of the principal objectives of quantum thermodynamics is to explore quantum effects and their potential beneficial role in thermodynamic tasks like work extraction or refrigeration. So far, even though several papers have already shown…
Thermodynamic constraints impose a trade-off between power and efficiency in heat engines, preventing the simultaneous achievement of high power and high efficiency. For classical microscopic engines, explicit inequalities have been…
Carnot's theorem poses a fundamental limit on the maximum efficiency achievable from an engine that works between two reservoirs at thermal equilibrium. We extend this result to the case of arbitrary nonthermal stationary reservoirs, even…
The interplay between quantum-mechanical properties, such as coherence, and classical notions, such as energy, is a subtle topic at the forefront of quantum thermodynamics. The traditional Carnot argument limits the conversion of heat to…