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Conversion of chemical energy into mechanical work is the fundamental mechanism of several natural phenomena at the nanoscale, like molecular machines and Brownian motors. Quantum mechanical effects are relevant for optimising these…
Diverse models of engines energised by quantum-coherent, hence non-thermal, baths allow the engine efficiency to transgress the standard thermodynamic Carnot bound. These transgressions call for an elucidation of the underlying mechanisms.…
Originally formulated for macroscopic machines, the laws of thermodynamics were recently shown to hold for quantum systems coupled to ideal sources of work (external classical fields) and heat (systems at equilibrium). Ongoing efforts have…
The optimal power performance of a first principle quantum heat engine model shows friction-like phenomena when the internal fluid Hamiltonian does not commute with the external control field. The model is based on interacting…
The question of whether quantum coherence is a resource beneficial or detrimental to the performance of quantum heat engines has been thoroughly studied but remains undecided. To isolate the contribution of coherence, we analyze the…
In this paper we investigate the relationship between the efficiency of a cyclic quantum heat engine with the Hilbert space dimension of the thermal baths. By means of a general inequality, we show that the Carnot efficiency can be obtained…
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,…
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…
For heat engines working between two heat baths, functionality is often conditioned on a set of fixed constraints such as given internal structure of the engine and given temperatures for the baths. It is, however, important to devise heat…
The design and implementation of quantum technologies necessitates the understanding of thermodynamic processes in the quantum domain. In stark contrast to macroscopic thermodynamics, at the quantum scale processes generically operate far…
We study the efficiency at maximum power, $\eta_m$, of irreversible quantum Carnot engines (QCEs) that perform finite-time cycles between a hot and a cold reservoir at temperatures $T_h$ and $T_c$, respectively. For QCEs in the reversible…
Given a quantum heat engine that operates in a cycle that reaches maximal efficiency for a time-dependent Hamiltonian H(t) of the working substance, with overall controllable driving H(t) = g(t) H, we study the deviation of the efficiency…
The aim of this book chapter is to indicate how quantum phenomena are affecting the operation of microscopic thermal machines, such as engines and refrigerators. As converting heat to work is one of the fundamental concerns in…
Power and efficiency are fundamental criteria for evaluating the performance of thermodynamic cycles. However, it is generally impossible to maximize both simultaneously. In particular, achieving maximum efficiency inevitably leads to…
We identify the operational conditions for maximum power of a nanothermoelectric engine consisting of a single quantum level embedded between two leads at different temperatures and chemical potentials. The corresponding thermodynamic…
The laws of thermodynamics put limits to the efficiencies of thermal machines. Analogues of these laws are now established for quantum engines weakly and passively coupled to the environment providing a framework to find improvements to…
A quantum heat engine of a specific type is studied. This engine contains a single particle confined in the infinite square well potential with variable width and consists of three processes: the isoenergetic process (which has no classical…
We present the general theory of a quantum heat machine based on an $N$-level system (working medium) whose $N-1$ excited levels are degenerate, a prerequisite for steady-state interlevel coherence. Our goal is to find out: To what extent…
We investigate, in an analytical fashion, quantum Carnot cycles of a microscopic heat engine coupled to two nite heat reservoirs, whose internal cycles could own higher e ciency than the standard Carnot limit without consuming extra quantum…
Two testable schemes for quantum heat engines are investigated under the quantization framework of noncommutative (NC) quantum mechanics (QM). By identifying the phenomenological connection between the phase-space NC driving parameters and…