Related papers: Thermal machines beyond the weak coupling regime
In recent years we have witnessed a concentrated effort to make sense of thermodynamics for small-scale systems. One of the main difficulties is to capture a suitable notion of work that models realistically the purpose of quantum machines,…
We study work extraction processes mediated by finite-time interactions with an ambient bath -- \emph{partial thermalizations} -- as continuous time Markov processes for two-level systems. Such a stochastic process results in fluctuations…
The treatment of quantum thermodynamic systems beyond weak coupling is of increasing relevance, yet extremely challenging. The evaluation of thermodynamic quantities in strong-coupling regimes requires a nonperturbative knowledge of the…
According to the second law of thermodynamics, for every transformation performed on a system which is in contact with an environment of fixed temperature, the extracted work is bounded by the decrease of the free energy of the system.…
The consistent definition of the thermodynamic functions of small open quantum systems in contact with an environment in equilibrium with a heat bath has been the subject of many debates in the quantum community. In the present work we…
A suitable way of quantifying work for microscopic quantum systems has been constantly debated in the field of quantum thermodynamics. One natural approach is to measure the average increase in energy of an ancillary system, called the…
A key concept in quantum thermodynamics is extractable work, which specifies the maximum amount of work that can be extracted from a quantum system. Different quantities are used to measure extractable work, the most prevalent of which are…
We study the functioning of a three-level thermal machine when acting on a many-qubit system, the entire system being placed in an electromagnetic field in a stationary out-of-thermal-equilibrium configuration. This realistic setup stands…
Various engine types are thermodynamically equivalent in the quantum limit of small 'engine action'. Our previous derivation of the equivalence is restricted to Markovian heat baths and to implicit classical work repository (e.g., laser…
Thermodynamics of quantum systems out-of-equilibrium is very important for the progress of quantum technologies, however, the effects of many body interactions and their interplay with temperature, different drives and dynamical regimes is…
Considering a general microscopic model for a quantum measuring apparatus comprising a quantum probe coupled to a thermal bath, we analyze the energetic resources necessary for the realization of a quantum measurement, which includes the…
We analyze work extraction protocols using the long-lived quantum coherence of a three-level quantum system, which is coupled to a thermal bath through dipole-monopole interactions. We identify situations where persistent quantum coherence…
Evaluating the maximum amount of work extractable from a nanoscale quantum system is one of the central problems in quantum thermodynamics. Previous works identified the free energy of the input state as the optimal rate of extractable work…
In our recent letter [1] we discussed that thermodynamics is violated in quantum Brownian motion beyond the weak coupling limit. In his comment, Tasaki [2] derives an inequality for the relative entropy and claims, without making any…
We show that the maximum extractable work (ergotropy) from a quantum many-body system is constrained by local athermality of an initial state and local entropy decrease brought about by quantum operations. The obtained universal upper bound…
We develop a general theory describing the thermodynamical behavior of open quantum systems coupled to thermal baths beyond perturbation theory. Our approach is based on the exact time-local quantum master equation for the reduced open…
Explaining the influence of strong coupling in the dynamics of open quantum systems is one of the most challenging issues in the rapidly growing field of quantum thermodynamics. By using a particular definition of heat, we develop a new…
We investigate how the presence of quantum correlations can influence work extraction in closed quantum systems, establishing a new link between the field of quantum non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the one of quantum information theory.…
The theory of quantum thermodynamics investigates how the concepts of heat, work, and temperature can be carried over to the quantum realm, where fluctuations and randomness are fundamentally unavoidable. Of particular practical relevance…
We study the performance of quantum thermal machines in which the working fluid of the model is represented by a many-body quantum system that is periodically connected with external baths via local couplings. A formal characterization of…