Related papers: Conservation Laws and Thermodynamic Efficiencies
We show that for a two-dimensional gas of elastically interacting particles the thermoelectric efficiency reaches the Carnot efficiency in the thermodynamic limit. Numerical simulations, by means of the multi-particle collision dynamics…
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…
Carnot efficiency sets a fundamental upper bound on the heat engine efficiency, attainable in the quasi-static limit, albeit at the cost of completely sacrificing power output. In this Letter, we present a minimal heat engine model that can…
It is common in many thermodynamic textbooks to illustrate the Carnot theorem through the usage of diverse state equations for gases, paramagnets, and other simple thermodynamic systems. As it is well-known, the universality of the Carnot…
We consider a generalisation of thermodynamics that deals with multiple conserved quantities at the level of individual quantum systems. Each conserved quantity, which, importantly, need not commute with the rest, can be extracted and…
We analyze a category of problems that is of interest in many physical situations, including those encountered in introductory physics classes: systems with two well-delineated parts that exchange energy, eventually reaching a shared…
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 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…
We derive a bound on the efficiency of thermal engines that can be sharper than Carnot's limit. It is a function of statistical correlations between the engine internal state and Hamiltonian, can be saturated even in finite-time cycles, and…
The thermodynamics of quantum systems coupled to periodically modulated heat baths and work reservoirs is developed. By identifying affinities and fluxes, the first and second law are formulated consistently. In the linear response regime,…
We study the modification of the second law of thermodynamics for a quantum system interacting with a reservoir regarding quantum coherence. The whole system is isolated so that neither energy nor information is lost. It is discovered that…
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…
We study the problem of thermoelectricity and propose a simple microscopic mechanism for the increase of thermoelectric efficiency. We consider the cross transport of particles and energy in open classical ergodic billiards. We show that,…
We consider finite harmonic chain (consisting of N classical particles) plus dissipative force acting on one particle (called dissipating particle) only. We want to prove that "in the generic case" the energy (per particle) for the whole…
We analyze the efficiency of thermal engines (either quantum or classical) working with a single heat reservoir like atmosphere. The engine first gets an energy intake, which can be done in arbitrary non-equilibrium way e.g. combustion of…
Following the result by Skrzypczyk et al., arXiv:1009.0865, that certain self-contained quantum thermal machines can reach Carnot efficiency, we discuss the functioning of self-contained quantum thermal machines and show, in a very general…
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…
We study the maximum efficiency of a Carnot cycle heat engine based on a small system. It is revealed that due to the finiteness of the system, irreversibility may arise when the working substance contacts with a heat bath. As a result,…
We consider a photo--Carnot engine that consists of a single--mode radiation field in an optical cavity. One the heat reservoirs is made of a beam of thermally entangled pairs of two--level atoms that interact resonantly with the cavity. We…
The laws of thermodynamics strongly restrict the performance of thermal machines. Standard thermodynamics, initially developed for uncorrelated macroscopic systems, does not hold for microscopic systems correlated with their environments.…