Related papers: Quantum point contacts as heat engines
Uncovering whether strong system-bath coupling can be an advantageous operation resource for energy conversion can facilitate the development of efficient quantum heat engines (QHEs). Yet, a consensus on this ongoing debate is still lacking…
Heat engines extract work by running cyclically between two heat reservoirs. When the two reservoirs are thermal and at different temperatures, the maximum efficiency of the engine is given by the Carnot limit. Here we consider a quantum…
We propose a two-stage cycle for an optimized linear-irreversible heat engine that operates, in a finite time, between a hot (cold) reservoir and a finite auxiliary system acting as a sink (source) in the first (second) stage. Under the…
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…
Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relations express a trade-off between precision, defined as the noise-to-signal ratio of a generic current, and the amount of associated entropy production. These results have deep consequences for autonomous heat…
The concept of thermal machines has evolved from the canonical steam engine to the recently proposed nanoscopic quantum systems as working fluids. The latter obey quantum open system dynamics and frequently operate in non-equilibrium…
Heat is a physical manifestation of entropy, where the removal of entropy from a thermal energy reservoir permits the conversion of heat into work. This entropy transfer is facilitated by the cold thermal energy reservoir in typical heat…
The one-dimensional extended Hubbard model (EHM) in the atomic limit has recently been found to exhibit a curious thermal pseudo-transition behavior, which closely resembles first and second-order thermal phase transitions. This phenomenon,…
The energy conversion efficiency of far-from-equilibrium systems is generally limited by irreversible thermodynamic fluxes that make contact with different heat baths. For complex systems, the states of the maximum efficiency and the…
In this paper we investigate the relationship between the efficiency of a cyclic quantum heat engine with the Hilbert space dimension of the thermal baths. By means of a general inequality, we show that the Carnot efficiency can be obtained…
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…
The emerging quantum technological apparatuses [1,2], such as the quantum computer [3-5], call for extreme performance in thermal engineering at the nanoscale [6]. Importantly, quantum mechanics sets a fundamental upper limit for the flow…
We derive the statistics of the efficiency under the assumption that thermodynamic fluxes fluctuate with normal law, parametrizing it in terms of time, macroscopic efficiency, and a coupling parameter $\zeta$. It has a peculiar behavior: No…
The quantum heat engines have drawn much attention due to miniaturization of devices recently. We study the dynamics of the quantum Otto heat engine using the driven-dissipative Schr\"{o}dinger equation. Starting from different initial…
We apply advanced methods of control theory to open quantum systems and we determine finite-time processes which are optimal with respect to thermodynamic performances. General properties and necessary conditions characterizing optimal…
The thermodynamics of quantum systems coupled to periodically modulated heat baths and work reservoirs is developed. By identifying affinities and fluxes, the first and second law are formulated consistently. In the linear response regime,…
We study the optimal performance of an endoreversible quantum dot heat engine, in which the heat transfer between the system and baths is mediated by qubits, operating under the conditions of a trade-off objective function known as maximum…
By harnessing quantum phenomena, quantum devices have the potential to outperform their classical counterparts. Previous work has shown that a bosonic working medium can yield better performance than a fermionic medium. We expand upon this…
Performance of nano- and micro-scale heat engines can be improved with a help from quantum mechanical phenomena. Recently, heat reservoirs with quantum coherence have been proposed to enhance engine performance beyond the Carnot limit even…
A central building block of a heat engine is the working fluid, which mediates the conversion of heat into work. In nanoscale heat engines, the working fluid can be a quantum system whose behavior and dynamics are non-classical. A…