Related papers: Brownian Carnot engine
Efficiency and power are two central measures of the performance of thermal machines. We here study the power-efficiency-stability trade-off in a finite-time quantum Carnot information engine, in which an information reservoir replaces the…
We introduce a general framework for analyzing the thermodynamics of small systems that are driven by both a periodic temperature variation and some external parameter modulating their energy. This set-up covers, in particular, periodic…
Carnot established in 1824 that the efficiency of cyclic engines operating between a hot bath at absolute temperature $T_{hot}$ and a bath at a lower temperature $T_{cold}$ cannot exceed $1-T_{cold}/T_{hot}$. We show that linear oscillators…
Information can improve heat engine performance, but the underlying principles are still not so clear. Here we introduce a Carnot information machine (CIE) and obtain a quantitative relationship between the engine performance and…
Situations where a spontaneous process of energy or matter transfer is enhanced by an external device are widespread in nature (human sweating system, enzyme catalysis, facilitated diffusion across bio-membranes, industrial heat…
Machines are only Carnot efficient if they are reversible, but then their power output is vanishingly small. Here we ask, what is the maximum efficiency of an irreversible device with finite power output? We use a nonlinear scattering…
The construction of efficient thermal engines operating at finite times constitutes a fundamental and timely topic in nonequilibrium thermodynamics. We introduce a strategy for optimizing the performance of Brownian engines, based on a…
Brownian information engines can extract work from thermal fluctuations by utilizing information. So far, the studies on Brownian information engines consider the system in a thermal bath; however, many processes in nature occur in a…
A Brownian gyrator is a system in which a particle experiences thermal noise from two distinct heat baths. This nonequilibrium setup inherently generates a nonzero torque, leading to gyrating motion around a potential energy minimum. As a…
From synthetic active devices such as self-propelling Janus colloids to micro-organisms like bacteria, micro-algae, living cells in tissues, active fluctuations are ubiquitous. Thermodynamics of small systems involving thermal as well as…
The Carnot-like heat engines are classified into three types (normal-, sub- and super-dissipative) according to relations between the minimum irreversible entropy production in the "isothermal" processes and the time for completing those…
Thermodynamics places a limit on the efficiency of heat engines, but not on their output power or on how the power and efficiency change with the engine's cycle time. In this manuscript, we develop a geometrical description of the power and…
We study the standard four-stroke regenerative quantum Stirling heat engine cycle, which assumes local thermal equilibrium at each stage, within the standard weak-coupling, Markovian open quantum system framework. We point out that the…
The minimal set of thermodynamic control parameters consists of a statistical (thermal) and a mechanical one. These suffice to introduce all the pertinent thermodynamic variables; thermodynamic processes can then be defined as paths on this…
Microscopic heat engines are microscale systems that convert energy flows between heat reservoirs into work or systematic motion. We have experimentally realized a minimal microscopic heat engine. It consists of a colloidal Brownian…
At the dawn of thermodynamics, Carnot's constraint on efficiency of heat engines stimulated the formulation of one of the most universal physical principles, the second law of thermodynamics. In recent years, the field of heat engines…
Various quantum systems are considered as the working substance for the analysis of quantum heat cycles and quantum refrigerators. The ongoing technological challenge is how efficiently can a heat engine convert thermal energy to mechanical…
We investigate the efficiency of a quantum Carnot engine based on open quantum dynamics theory. The model includes time-dependent external fields for the subsystems controlling the isothermal and isentropic processes and for the…
Random noise can generate a unidirectional heat current across asymmetric nano objects in the absence (or against) a temperature gradient. We present a minimal model for a molecular-level stochastic heat pump that may operate arbitrarily…
Thermostatics of CARNOT engines has been extended by more recent research based on endo-reversible model. Our model assumes exo-reversibility but endo-irreversibility to determine new upper-bound to thermomechanical conversion. We propose a…