Related papers: Attainability of Carnot Efficiency with Autonomous…
Power and efficiency are fundamental criteria for evaluating the performance of thermodynamic cycles. However, it is generally impossible to maximize both simultaneously. In particular, achieving maximum efficiency inevitably leads to…
Combining two disparate lines of thought like thermodynamics and quantum mechanics yields surprising results. The resulting idea of quantum thermodynamic engines holds promise for harvesting novel sources of energy of purely quantum origin,…
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 question of whether quantum coherence is a resource beneficial or detrimental to the performance of quantum heat engines has been thoroughly studied but remains undecided. To isolate the contribution of coherence, we analyze the…
The efficiency at maximum power has been investigated extensively, yet the practical control scheme to achieve it remains elusive. We fill such gap with a stepwise Carnot-like cycle, which consists the discrete isothermal process (DIP) and…
In a stochastic heat engine driven by a cyclic non-equilibrium protocol, fluctuations in work and heat give rise to a fluctuating efficiency. Using computer simulations and tools from large deviation theory, we have examined these…
Several recent theories address the efficiency of a macroscopic thermodynamic motor at maximum power and question the so-called "Curzon-Ahlborn (CA) efficiency." Considering the entropy exchanges and productions in an n-sources motor, we…
In 1975, Courzon and Ahlborn studied a Carnot engine with thermal losses and got an expression for its efficiency that described better the performance of actual heat machines than the traditional result due to Carnot. In their original…
The efficiency at maximum power output of linear irreversible Carnot-like heat engines is investigated based on the assumption that the rate of irreversible entropy production of working substance in each "isothermal" process is a quadratic…
The possibility of utilizing quantum effects to enhance the performance of quantum heat engines has been an active topic of research, but how to enhance the performance by optimizing the engine parameters needs to be further studied. In…
There are two paradigms to study nanoscale engines in stochastic and quantum thermodynamics. Autonomous models, which do not rely on any external time-dependence, and models that make use of time-dependent control fields, often combined…
We discuss the efficiency of a heat engine operating in a nonequilibrium steady state maintained by two heat reservoirs. Within the general framework of linear irreversible thermodynamics we derive a universal upper bound on the efficiency…
The Carnot cycle combines reversible isothermal and adiabatic strokes to obtain optimal efficiency, at the expense of a vanishing power output. Quantum Carnot-analog cycles are constructed and solved, operating irreversibly at non-vanishing…
We model a Brownian heat engine as a Brownian particle that hops in a periodic ratchet potential where the ratchet potential is coupled with a linearly decreasing background temperature. It is shown that the efficiency of such Brownian heat…
We study how to achieve the ultimate power in the simplest, yet non trivial, model of a thermal machine, namely a two-level quantum system coupled to two thermal baths. Without making any prior assumption on the protocol, via optimal…
Thermodynamic constraints impose a trade-off between power and efficiency in heat engines, preventing the simultaneous achievement of high power and high efficiency. For classical microscopic engines, explicit inequalities have been…
The performance of one type (Carnot) of Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) cycle is analyzed within the framework of thermodynamic free energies. ICE performance is different from that of an External Combustion Engine (ECE) which is dictated…
The quantum engine cycle serves as an analogous representation of classical heat engines for microscopic systems and the quantum regime of thermal devices is composed of a single element. In this work, the Quantum-Mechanical properties of a…
The thermodynamic uncertainty relation provides an inequality relating any mean current, the associated dispersion and the entropy production rate for arbitrary non-equilibrium steady states. Applying it here to a general model of a…
Classically, the power generated by an ideal thermal machine cannot be larger than the Carnot limit. This profound result is rooted in the second law of thermodynamics. A hot question is whether this bound is still valid for microengines…