Related papers: Carnot Cycle at Finite Power: Attainability of Max…
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…
The Carnot heat engine sets an upper bound on the efficiency of a heat engine. As an ideal, reversible engine, a single cycle must be performed in infinite time, and so the Carnot engine has zero power. However, there is nothing in…
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…
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 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 consider the optimization of a finite-time Carnot engine characterized by small dissipations. We bound the power with a simple inequality and show that the optimal strategy is to perform small cycles around a given working point, which…
The optimization of finite-time thermodynamic heat engines was intensively explored recently, yet limited to few cycles, e.g. finite-time Carnot-like cycle. In this paper, we supplement a new type of finite-time engine with quantum Otto…
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…
We construct an example of heat engine whose efficiency at maximum power breaks down the previously derived bounds in the linear response regime. Such example takes a classical harmonic oscillator as the working substance undergoing a…
Since its inception about two centuries ago thermodynamics has sparkled continuous interest and fundamental questions. According to the second law no heat engine can have an efficiency larger than Carnot's efficiency. The latter can be…
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…
We study a thermal engine model for which Newton's cooling law is obeyed during heat transfer processes. The thermal efficiency and its bounds at maximum output power are derived and discussed. This model, though quite simple, can be…
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…
Heat engines constitute the major building blocks of modern technologies. However, conventional heat engines with higher power yield lesser efficiency and vice versa and respect various power-efficiency trade-off relations. This is also…
A long standing open problem whether a heat engine with finite power achieves the Carnot efficiency is investigated. We rigorously prove a general trade-off inequality on thermodynamic efficiency and time interval of a cyclic process with…
We study the possibility of achieving the Carnot efficiency in a finite-power underdamped Brownian Carnot cycle. Recently, it was reported that the Carnot efficiency is achievable in a general class of finite-power Carnot cycles in the…
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.…
Thermodynamics places a limit on the efficiency of heat engines, but not on their output power or on how the power and efficiency change with the engine's cycle time. In this manuscript, we develop a geometrical description of the power and…
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 new universality in optimization of trade-off between power and efficiency for low-dissipation Carnot cycles is presented. It is shown that any trade-off measure expressible in terms of efficiency and the ratio of power to its maximum…