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Related papers: The Broken Engine of Szilard

200 papers

Particle motion at the micro-scale is an incessant tug-of-war between thermal fluctuations and applied forces on one side, and the strong resistance exerted by fluid viscosity on the other. Friction is so strong that completely neglecting…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-05 Antonio Celani , Stefano Bo , Ralf Eichhorn , Erik Aurell

The realization of microscopic heat engines has gained a surge of research interest in statistical physics, soft matter, and biological physics. A typical microscopic heat engine employs a colloidal particle trapped in a confining…

We investigate a model of a stochastic engine operating cyclically at constant bath temperature, which consists of an overdamped Brownian harmonic oscillator that plays the role of working substance and is elastically coupled to an active…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-09-16 Erick Efrain Cote-Valencia , Juan Ruben Gomez-Solano

Even though irreversibility is one of the major hallmarks of any real life process, an actual understanding of irreversible processes remains still mostly semiempirical. In this paper we formulate a thermodynamic uncertainty principle for…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-03-17 Rudolf Hanel , Petr Jizba

The Szilard engine (SZE) is the quintessence of Maxwell's demon, which can extract the work from a heat bath by utilizing information. We present the first complete quantum analysis of the SZE, and derive an analytic expression of the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2011-02-23 Sang Wook Kim , Takahiro Sagawa , Simone De Liberato , Masahito Ueda

We have performed an extensive analysis of a single particle stochastic heat engine constructed by manipulating a Brownian particle in a time dependent harmonic potential. The cycle consists of two isothermal steps at different temperatures…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2014-12-01 Shubhashis Rana , P. S. Pal , Arnab Saha , A. M. Jayannavar

The physical impossibility of heat transfer under isothermal conditions implies that the classical expression for the entropy of the ideal gas may not be compatible with the internal energy of the gas itself. A corrected expression of the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-09-01 A. Paglietti

By developing and leveraging an explicit molecular realisation of a measurement-and-feedback-powered Szilard engine, we investigate the extraction of work from complex environments by minimal machines with finite capacity for memory and…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-09-04 Rory A. Brittain , Nick S. Jones , Thomas E. Ouldridge

A Stirling engine made of a colloidal particle in contact with a nonequilibrium bath is considered and analyzed with the tools of stochastic energetics. We model the bath by non Gaussian persistent noise acting on the colloidal particle.…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2017-05-24 Ruben Zakine , Alexandre Solon , Todd Gingrich , Frédéric van Wijland

Two granular gases separated by an adiabatic piston and initially in the same macroscopic state are considered. It is found that a phase transition with an spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs. When the mass of the piston is increased…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2013-05-06 J. Javier Brey , Nagi Khalil

In order to reconcile the entropy reduction of a system through external interventions that are linked to a measurement with the second law of thermodynamics, there are two main proposals: (i) The entropy reduction is compensated by the…

Classical Physics · Physics 2025-05-26 Heinz-Jürgen Schmidt , Thomas Bröcker

The paper develops the dynamics and thermodynamics of Stirling engines that run with temperature differences below 100 0C. The working gas pressure is analytically expressed using an alternative thermodynamic cycle. The shaft dynamics is…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-08-26 Alejandro Romanelli

Quantum Szilard engine constitutes an adequate interplay of thermodynamics, information theory and quantum mechanics. Szilard engines are in general operated by a Maxwell's Demon where Landauer's principle resolves the apparent paradoxes.…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-04-22 Alhun Aydin , Altug Sisman , Ronnie Kosloff

The innate complexity of solid state physics exposes superconducting quantum circuits to interactions with uncontrolled degrees of freedom degrading their coherence. By using a simple stabilization sequence we show that a superconducting…

We develop an alternative thermodynamic cycle for the Stirling machine, where the polytropic process plays a central role. Analytical expressions for pressure and temperatures of the working gas are obtained as a function of the volume and…

Classical Physics · Physics 2017-11-21 Alejandro Romanelli

Despite its historical importance, a perfect gas enclosed by a pistons and in contact with a thermal reservoirs is a system still largely under study. Its thermodynamic properties are not yet well understood when driven under…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-10-12 G. Gubbiotti , D. Chiuchiù

It was recently found that the information-to-work conversion in a quantum Szilard engine can be increased by using a working medium of bosons with attractive interactions. In the original scheme, the work output depends on the insertion…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-07-04 J. Bengtsson , M. Nilsson Tengstrand , S. M. Reimann

From the steam engine to current nano-devices, the design of efficient thermal machines has been instrumental in modern societies. In its essence a thermal engine can be thought as a working substance, in contact with two or more baths,…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-03-18 Michele Campisi , Rosario Fazio

A dynamical phase transition from reversible to irreversible behavior occurs when particle suspensions are subjected to uniform oscillatory shear, even in the Stokes flow limit. We consider a more general situation with non-uniform strain…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2015-05-18 Jeffrey S. Guasto , Andrew S. Ross , J. P. Gollub

We consider a Brownian particle confined by an external potential and subject to stochastic resetting to the origin. Motivated by the repetitive nature of the dynamics, we describe the process as a thermodynamic cycle of thermal expansion…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-05-28 Oded Farago