Related papers: Quantum Confinement and Negative Heat Capacity
A first principle reciprocating quantum refrigerator is investigated with the purpose of determining the limitations of cooling to absolute zero. We find that if the energy spectrum of the working medium possesses an uncontrollable gap,…
Thermodynamics is one of the fascinating branches of traditional physics to certify the occurrence of many natural processes. On the other hand, quantum theory is the most acceptable description of the microscopic world. In the present…
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…
Engines are systems and devices that convert one form of energy into another, typically into a more useful form that can perform work. In the classical setup, physical, chemical, and biological engines largely involve the conversion of heat…
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,…
We derive rigorous quantum mechanical bounds for the heat current through a nanojunction connecting two thermal baths at different temperatures. Based on exact sum rules, these bounds compliment the well-known quantum of thermal conductance…
Passivity is a fundamental concept in thermodynamics that demands a quantum system's energy cannot be lowered by any reversible, unitary process acting on the system. In the limit of many such systems, passivity leads in turn to the concept…
We consider a thermodynamic machine in which the working fluid is a quantized harmonic oscillator that is controlled on timescales that are much faster than the oscillator period. We find that operation in this `fast' regime allows access…
It is known that temperature estimates of macroscopic systems in equilibrium are most precise when their energy fluctuations are large. However, for nanoscale systems deviations from standard thermodynamics arise due to their interactions…
We introduce the idea of weakly coherent collisional models, where the elements of an environment interacting with a system of interest are prepared in states that are approximately thermal, but have an amount of coherence proportional to a…
A minimal model of a quantum refrigerator (QR), i.e. a periodically phase-flipped two-level system permanently coupled to a finite-capacity bath (cold bath) and an infinite heat dump (hot bath), is introduced and used to investigate the…
Temperature in a simple thermodynamical system is not limited from above. It is also widely believed that it does not make sense talking about temperatures higher than the Planck temperature in the absence of the full theory of quantum…
We propose a thermodynamic refrigeration cycle which uses Indefinite Causal Orders to achieve non-classical cooling. The cycle cools a cold reservoir while consuming purity in a control qubit. We first show that the application to an input…
We consider a quantum system of fixed size consisting of a regular chain of $n$-level subsystems, where $n$ is finite. Forming groups of $N$ subsystems each, we show that the strength of interaction between the groups scales with $N^{-…
Measuring the local temperature of nanoscale systems out of equilibrium has emerged as a new tool to study local heating effects and other local thermal properties of systems driven by external fields. Although various experimental…
Critical phenomena at finite temperature underpin a broad range of physical systems, yet their study remains challenging due to computational bottlenecks near phase transitions. Quantum annealers have attracted significant interest as a…
Quantum technology promises revolutionizing applications in information processing, communications, sensing, and modelling. However, efficient on-demand cooling of the functional quantum degrees of freedom remains a major challenge in many…
The thermodynamic influence of quantum probing on an object is studied. Here, quantum probing is understood as a pre-measurement based on a non-demolition interaction, which records some information of the probed object, but does not change…
Quantum heat machines (QHMs) models generally assume a weak coupling to the baths. This supposition is grounded in the separability principle between systems and allows the derivation of the evolution equation for this case. In the weak…
There are both practical and foundational motivations to consider the thermodynamics of quantum systems at small scales. Here we address the issue of autonomous quantum thermal machines that are tailored to achieve some specific…