Related papers: On how nanomechanical systems can minimize dissipa…
The growing reliance of electric power systems on gas-fired generation to balance intermittent sources of renewable energy has increased the variation and volume of flows through natural gas transmission pipelines. Adapting pipeline…
Understanding energy dissipation and transport in nanoscale structures is of great importance for the design of energy-efficient circuits and energy-conversion systems. This is also a rich domain for fundamental discoveries at the…
We consider nano-sized artificial or biological machines working in steady state enforced by imposing non-equilibrium concentrations of solutes or by applying external forces, torques or electric fields. For unicyclic and strongly coupled…
We study the optimal control of storage which is used for arbitrage, i.e. for buying a commodity when it is cheap and selling it when it is expensive. Our particular concern is with the management of energy systems, although the results are…
Legged robots offer several advantages when navigating unstructured environments, but they often fall short of the efficiency achieved by wheeled robots. One promising strategy to improve their energy economy is to leverage their natural…
It is well-known that proper scaling can increase the efficiency of computational problems. In this paper we define and show that a balancing technique can substantially improve the computational efficiency of optimal control algorithms. We…
The characterization and control of quantum effects in the performance of thermodynamic tasks may open new avenues for small thermal machines working in the nanoscale. We study the impact of coherence in the energy basis in the operation of…
The investigation of optimal processes has a long history in the field of thermodynamics. It is well known that finite-time processes that minimize dissipation often exhibit discontinuities. We use a combination of numerical and analytical…
Thermodynamics at the nanoscale is known to differ significantly from its familiar macroscopic counterpart: the possibility of state transitions is not determined by free energy alone, but by an infinite family of free-energy-like…
Recent studies have explored finite-time dissipation-minimizing protocols for stochastic thermodynamic systems driven arbitrarily far from equilibrium, when granted full external control to drive the system. However, in both simulation and…
Quantum coherence inherently affects the dynamics and the performances of a quantum machine. Coherent control can, at least in principle, enhance the work extraction and boost the velocity of evolution in an open quantum system. Using…
Understanding the complex patterns in space-time exhibited by active systems has been the subject of much interest in recent times. Complementing this forward problem is the inverse problem of controlling active matter. Here we use optimal…
Optical techniques have been employed to coherently control the quantum transport through nanojunctions. Conventional works on optical control of quantum transport usually applied a tailored electrical pulses to perform specific tasks. In…
Out of thermal equilibrium, an environment imposes effective mechanical forces on microscopical nanofabricated devices, chemical or biological systems. Here we address the question of how to calculate these forces together with the response…
This article develops variational integrators for a class of underactuated mechanical systems using the theory of discrete mechanics. Further, a discrete optimal control problem is formulated for the considered class of systems and…
The aim of this paper is to shed light on the problem of controlling a complex network with minimal control energy. We show first that the control energy depends on the time constant of the modes of the network, and that the closer the…
We present a rigorous approach, based on the concept of continuous thermomajorisation, to algorithmically characterise the full set of energy occupations of a quantum system accessible from a given initial state through weak interactions…
We consider the problem of time optimal control of a continuous bosonic quantum system subject to the action of a Markovian dissipation. In particular, we consider the case of a one mode Gaussian quantum system prepared in an arbitrary…
Optimal (reversible) processes in thermodynamics can be modelled as step-by-step processes, where the system is successively thermalized with respect to different Hamiltonians by an external thermal bath. However, in practice interactions…
In this paper, we describe a constrained Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism for the optimal control of nonholonomic mechanical systems. In particular, we aim to minimize a cost functional, given initial and final conditions where the…