Related papers: The extraction of work from quantum coherence
Universality of classical thermodynamics rests on the central limit theorem, due to which, measurements of thermal fluctuations are unable to reveal detailed information regarding the microscopic structure of a macroscopic body. When small…
The second law of thermodynamics places a limitation into which states a system can evolve into. For systems in contact with a heat bath, it can be combined with the law of energy conservation, and it says that a system can only evolve into…
We study the stochastic energetic exchanges in quantum heat engines. Due to microreversibility, these obey a fluctuation relation, called the heat engine fluctuation relation, which implies the Carnot bound: no machine can have an…
Any quantum resource theory is based on free states and free operations, i.e., states and operations which can be created and performed at no cost. In the resource theory of coherence free states are diagonal in some fixed basis, and free…
In this paper we give a pedagogical introduction to the ideas of quantum thermodynamics and work fluctuations, using only basic concepts from quantum and statistical mechanics. After reviewing the concept of work, as usually taught in…
The minimum amount of thermodynamic work required in order to implement a quantum computation or a quantum state transformation can be quantified using frameworks based on the resource theory of thermodynamics, deeply rooted in the works of…
Thermal machines are physical systems designed to convert thermal energy into practical work through cyclic state transformations. A key component in such a machine is a clock-equipped control element that dictates which interaction…
In systems described by the scattering theory, there is an upper bound, lower than Carnot, on the efficiency of steady-state heat to work conversion at a given output power. We show that interacting systems can overcome such bound and…
The efficiency of cyclic heat engines is limited by the Carnot bound. This bound follows from the second law of thermodynamics and is attained by engines that operate between two thermal baths under the reversibility condition whereby the…
Resource theories are a generic approach used to manage any valuable resource, such as entanglement, purity, and asymmetry. Such frameworks are characterized by two main elements: a set of predefined (free) operations and states, that one…
The optimal efficiency of quantum (or classical) heat engines whose heat baths are $n$-particle systems is given by the information geometry and the strong large deviation. We give the optimal work extraction process as a concrete…
It is possible to extract work from a quantum-mechanical system whose dynamics is governed by a time-dependent cyclic Hamiltonian. An energy bath is required to operate such a quantum engine in place of the heat bath used to run a…
We consider locally thermal states (for two qubits) with certain amount of quantum entanglement present between them. Unlike previous protocols we show how work can be extracted by performing local unitary operations on this state by…
In a quantum Stirling heat engine, the heat exchanged with two thermal baths is partly utilized for performing work by redistributing the energy levels of the working substance. We analyze the thermodynamics of a quantum Stirling engine…
We identify and interpret the possible quantum thermal machine regimes with a transverse-field Ising model as the working substance. In general, understanding the emergence of such regimes in a many-body quantum system is challenging due to…
Quantum thermodynamics studies how quantum systems and operations may be exploited as sources of work to perform useful thermodynamic tasks. In real-world conditions, the evolution of open quantum systems typically displays memory effects,…
The Carnot heat engine sets an upper bound on the efficiency of a heat engine. As an ideal, reversible engine, a single cycle must be performed in infinite time, and so the Carnot engine has zero power. However, there is nothing in…
In this review the debated rapport between thermodynamics and quantum mechanics is addressed in the framework of the theory of periodically-driven/controlled quantum-thermodynamic machines. The basic model studied here is that of a…
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…
Collective behavior where a set of elements interact and generate effects that are beyond the reach of the individual non interacting elements, are always of great interest in physics. Quantum collective effects that have no classical…