Related papers: Quantum point contacts as heat engines
A quantum dot driven by two ac gate potentials oscillating with a phase lag may be regarded as a quantum engine, where energy is transported and dissipated in the form of heat. In this chapter we introduce a microscopic model for a quantum…
We present a detailed study of a three-level quantum heat engine operating at maximum efficient power function, a trade-off objective function defined by the product of the efficiency and power output of the engine. First, for near…
We analyze the performance of slowly driven meso- and micro-scale refrigerators and heat engines that operate between two thermal baths with small temperature difference. Using a general scaling argument, we show that such devices can work…
Standard heat machines (engine, heat pump, refrigerator) are composed of a system ("working fluid") coupled to at least two equilibrium baths at different temperatures and periodically driven by an external device (piston or rotor) called…
We study the thermoelectric properties and heat-to-work conversion performance of an interacting, multi-level quantum dot (QD) weakly coupled to electronic reservoirs. We focus on the sequential tunneling regime. The dynamics of the charge…
We study a minimal quantum Otto heat engine, where the working medium consists of an interacting few-body system in a harmonic trap. This allows us to consider the interaction strength as an additional tunable parameter during the work…
We study how a quantum heat engine performs across the critical value of an external parameter, pertaining to the quantum phase transition. Considering a two-ion system subjected to a magnetic field, we show that the system performs in a…
The employment of long-range interactions in quantum devices provides a promising route towards enhancing their performance in quantum technology applications. Here, the presence of long-range interactions is shown to enhance the…
We propose a scheme for a single-atom quantum heat engine based on ultra-cold atom technologies. Building on the high degree of control typical of cold atom systems, we demonstrate that three paradigmatic heat engines -- Carnot, Otto and…
We study temperature fluctuations in mesoscopic $N$-body systems undergoing non-equilibrium processes from the perspective of stochastic thermodynamics. By introducing a stochastic differential equation, we describe the evolution of the…
Interesting effects arise in cyclic machines where both heat and ergotropy transfer take place between the energising bath and the system (the working fluid). Such effects correspond to unconventional decompositions of energy exchange…
We construct a generic model for a heat engine using information theory concepts, attributing irreversible energy dissipation to the information transmission channels. Using several forms for the channel capacity, classical and quantum, we…
We studied the efficiency of two different schemes for a quantum heat engine, by considering a single Dirac particle trapped in an infinite one-dimensional potential well as the "working substance." The first scheme is a cycle, composed of…
The quest for good thermoelectric materials and/or high-efficiency thermoelectric devices is of primary importance from theoretical and practical points of view. Low-dimensional structures with quantum dots or molecules are promising…
Heat engines used to output useful work have important practical significance, which, in general, operate between heat baths of infinite size and constant temperature. In this paper we study the efficiency of a heat engine operating between…
We consider a thermodynamic machine in which the working fluid is a quantized harmonic oscillator that is controlled on timescales that are much faster than the oscillator period. We find that operation in this `fast' regime allows access…
Starting with Carnot engine, the ideal efficiency of a heat engine has been associated with quasi-static transformations and vanishingly small output power. Here, we exactly calculate the thermodynamic properties of a isothermal heat…
Achieving the Carnot efficiency at finite power is a challenging problem in heat engines due to the trade-off relation between efficiency and power that holds for general heat engines. It is pointed out that the Carnot efficiency at finite…
According to classical Boltzmannian thermodynamics, the efficiency of a cyclic machine is strictly lower than one. Such a result is a straightforward consequence of the second principle of thermodynamics. Recent advances in the study of the…
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…