Related papers: Quantum point contacts as heat engines
Work extraction from a heat engine in a cycle by a quantum mechanical device (quantum "piston") is analyzed. The standard definition of work fails in the quantum domain. The correct extractable work and its efficiency bound are shown to…
The thermodynamic properties of quantum heat engines are stochastic owing to the presence of thermal and quantum fluctuations. We here experimentally investigate the efficiency and nonequilibrium entropy production statistics of a spin-1/2…
We consider a photo--Carnot engine that consists of a single--mode radiation field in an optical cavity. One the heat reservoirs is made of a beam of thermally entangled pairs of two--level atoms that interact resonantly with the cavity. We…
The constraint relation for efficiency and power is crucial to design optimal heat engines operating within finite time. We find a universal constraint between efficiency and output power for heat engines operating in the low-dissipation…
The quantum analog of Carnot cycles in few-particle systems consists of two quantum adiabatic steps and two isothermal steps. This construction is formally justified by use of a minimum work principle. It is then shown, without relying on…
We develop a geometric framework to describe the thermodynamics of microscopic heat engines driven by slow periodic temperature variations and modulations of a mechanical control parameter. Covering both the classical and the quantum…
The condition for stationary engines to attain the Carnot efficiency in and beyond the linear response regime is investigated. We find that this condition for finite-size engines is significantly different from that for macroscopic engines…
We find the charge and heat currents caused by a temperature difference applied to a superconducting point contact or to a quantum point contact between a superconducting and normal conductors. The results are formulated in terms of the…
The interplay between quantum-mechanical properties, such as coherence, and classical notions, such as energy, is a subtle topic at the forefront of quantum thermodynamics. The traditional Carnot argument limits the conversion of heat to…
We studied the efficiency of two different schemes for a magnetically driven quantum heat engine, by considering as the working substance a single nonrelativistic particle trapped in a cylindrical potential well, in the presence of an…
We demonstrate that the system composed of a gyrotropic particle out of thermal equilibrium with vacuum can be regarded as a heat engine. Such a particle, initially at rest, will experience a fluctuation-induced torque and start to rotate,…
We consider quantum heat engines that operate between nonequilibrium stationary reservoirs. We evaluate their maximum efficiency from the positivity of the entropy production and show that it can be expressed in terms of an effective…
We introduce a simple two-level heat engine to study the efficiency in the condition of the maximum power output, depending on the energy levels from which the net work is extracted. In contrast to the quasi-statically operated Carnot…
Employing currently available quantum technology, we design and implement a non-classically correlated SWAP heat engine that allows to achieve an efficiency above the standard Carnot limit. Such an engine also boosts the amount of…
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 new quantum heat engine, in which the working medium is a quantum system with a discrete level and a continuum. Net work done by this engine is calculated and discussed. The results show that this quantum heat engine behaves…
According to the laws of thermodynamics, no heat engine can beat the efficiency of a Carnot cycle. This efficiency traditionally comes with vanishing power output and practical designs, optimized for power, generally achieve far less.…
Carnot's theorem poses a fundamental limit on the maximum efficiency achievable from an engine that works between two reservoirs at thermal equilibrium. We extend this result to the case of arbitrary nonthermal stationary reservoirs, even…
Differences between the thermodynamic behavior of the three-level amplifier (a quantum heat engine based on a thermally pumped laser) and the classical Carnot cycle are usually attributed to the essentially quantum or discrete nature of the…
The optimal power performance of a first principle quantum heat engine model shows friction-like phenomena when the internal fluid Hamiltonian does not commute with the external control field. The model is based on interacting…