Related papers: Efficiency and Large Deviations in Time-Asymmetric…
While thermodynamics is a useful tool to describe the driving of large systems close to equilibrium, fluctuations dominate the distribution of heat and work in small systems and far from equilibrium. We study the heat generated by driving a…
For finite-time quantum Otto heat engine with working fluid consisting of either a (i) qubit or (ii) a harmonic oscillator, we show that the relative fluctuation of output work is always greater than the corresponding relative fluctuation…
We study bounds on ratios of fluctuations in steady-state time-reversal heat engines controlled by multi affinities. In the linear response regime, we prove that the relative fluctuations (precision) of the output current (power) is always…
Stability is an important property of small thermal machines with fluctuating power output. We here consider a finite-time quantum Carnot engine based on a degenerate multilevel system and study the influence of its finite Hilbert space…
We derive general trade-off relations among the power, efficiency, and constancy for two-terminal thermoelectric systems in the linear response regime. Constancy, which quantifies the steadiness of the heat engine, is measured by its…
Macroscopic cyclic heat engines have been a major motivation for the emergence of thermodynamics. In the last decade, cyclic heat engines that have large fluctuations and operate at finite time were studied within the more modern framework…
Recently, a formal analogy between the fluctuating diffusivity and thermodynamics has been proposed based on phenomena of heterogeneous diffusion observed in living cells. This not only offers the analogs of the quantity of heat and work as…
The optimal efficiency of quantum (or classical) heat engines whose heat baths are $n$-particle systems is given by the information geometry and the strong large deviation. We give the optimal work extraction process as a concrete…
Understanding noisy information engines is a fundamental problem of non-equilibrium physics, particularly in biomolecular systems agitated by thermal and active fluctuations in the cell. By the generalized second law of thermodynamics, the…
Two recent topics on a formal thermodynamic analogy of intracellular diffusivity fluctuations observed experimentally in normal/anomalous diffusion are reported. Not only the analogs of the quantity of heat and work as well as the internal…
A dynamical model of a highly efficient heat engine is proposed, where an applied temperature difference maintains the motion of particles around the circuit consisting of two asymmetric narrow channels, in one of which the current flows…
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…
We study the performance of a quantum Otto heat engine with two spins coupled by a Heisenberg interaction, taking into account not only the mean values of work and efficiency but also their fluctuations. We first show that, for this system,…
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 efficiency of a single particle Szilard and Carnot engine. Within a first order correction to the quasi-static limit, the work distribution is found to be Gaussian and the correction factor to average work and efficiency only…
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…
We consider the performance of periodically driven stochastic heat engines in the linear response regime. Reaching the theoretical bounds for efficiency and efficiency at maximum power typically requires full control over the design and the…
We study the efficiency at maximum power, $\eta^*$, of engines performing finite-time Carnot cycles between a hot and a cold reservoir at temperatures $T_h$ and $T_c$, respectively. For engines reaching Carnot efficiency $\eta_C=1-T_c/T_h$…
We quantify the prior information to infer the optimal characteristics for a constrained thermodynamic process of maximum work extraction for a pair of non-identical finite systems. The total entropy of the whole system remains conserved.…
The trade-off between large power output, high efficiency and small fluctuations in the operation of heat engines has recently received interest in the context of thermodynamic uncertainty relations (TURs). Here we provide a concrete…