Related papers: The extraction of work from quantum coherence
Heat engines constitute the major building blocks of modern technologies. However, conventional heat engines with higher power yield lesser efficiency and vice versa and respect various power-efficiency trade-off relations. This is also…
Understanding whether uniquely quantum features can provide concrete advantages in thermodynamic processes is a central objective of quantum thermodynamics. A key challenge is quantifying how different forms of non-classicality can be…
Quantum coherence, encoded in the off-diagonal elements of a system's density matrix, is a key resource in quantum thermodynamics, fundamentally limiting the maximum extractable work known as ergotropy. While previous experiments have…
We study a quantum Stirling cycle which extracts work using quantized energy levels of a potential well. The work and the efficiency of the engine depend on the length of the potential well, and the Carnot efficiency is approached in a low…
Heat engines convert thermal energy into mechanical work. We here report the experimental realization of a fully quantum engine that converts quantum coherence into work. A single solid-state spin in diamond is fueled by a coherent bath and…
A cyclic thermodynamic heat engine runs most efficiently if it is reversible. Carnot constructed such a reversible heat engine by combining adiabatic and isothermal processes for a system containing an ideal gas. Here, we present an example…
Thermodynamics is a branch of science blessed by an unparalleled combination of generality of scope and formal simplicity. Based on few natural assumptions together with the four laws, it sets the boundaries between possible and impossible…
Energy is often partitioned into heat and work by two independent paths corresponding to the change in the eigenenergies or the probability distributions of a quantum system. The discrepancies of the heat and work for various quantum…
Quantum coherence is a fundamental property of quantum systems, separating quantum from classical physics. Recently, there has been significant interest in the characterization of quantum coherence as a resource, investigating how coherence…
Carnot efficiency sets a fundamental upper bound on the heat engine efficiency, attainable in the quasi-static limit, albeit at the cost of completely sacrificing power output. In this Letter, we present a minimal heat engine model that can…
We derive an efficiency bound for continuous quantum heat engines absorbing heat from squeezed thermal reservoirs. Our approach relies on a full-counting statistics description of nonequilibrium transport and it is not limited to the…
It is shown how information contained in the pairwise correlations (in general, partial) between atoms of a gas can be used to completely convert heat taken from a thermostat into mechanical work in a process of relaxation of the system to…
Work and quantum correlations are two fundamental resources in thermodynamics and quantum information theory. In this work we study how to use correlations among quantum systems to optimally store work. We analyse this question for isolated…
In a PRL [1], the authors claim to show that "the Clausius inequality can be violated, and that it is even possible to extract work from a thermal bath by cyclic variations of a parameter ("perpetuum mobile"), and that the physical cause…
The performance enhancements observed in various models of continuous quantum thermal machines have been linked to the buildup of coherences in a preferred basis. But, is this connection always an evidence of `quantum-thermodynamic…
The stationary state of a quantum particle strongly coupled to a quantum thermal bath is known to be non-gibbsian, due to entanglement with the bath. For harmonic potentials, where the system can be described by effective temperatures,…
How should one define thermodynamic quantities (internal energy, work, heat, etc.) for quantum systems coupled to their environments strongly? We examine three (classically equivalent) definitions of a quantum system's internal energy under…
Giving a universal upper bound on the power output of heat engines is a long-standing open problem. We tackle this problem for generic quantum machines in self-contained formulation by carefully including the switching process of the…
The minimal-coupling quantum heat engine is a thermal machine consisting of an explicit energy storage system, heat baths, and a working body, which alternatively couples to subsystems through discrete strokes -- energy-conserving two-body…
It is a central question in quantum thermodynamics to determine how irreversible is a process that transforms an initial state $\rho$ to a final state $\sigma$, and whether such irreversibility can be thought of as a useful resource. For…