Related papers: Attainability of Carnot Efficiency with Autonomous…
Living systems efficiently use chemical fuel to do work, process information, and assemble patterns despite thermal noise. Whether high efficiency arises from general principles or specific fine-tuning is unknown. Here, applying a recent…
We consider an isolated autonomous quantum machine, where an explicit quantum clock is responsible for performing all transformations on an arbitrary quantum system (the engine), via a time-independent Hamiltonian. In a general context, we…
An equilibrium reversible cycle with a certain engine to transduce the energy of any chemical reaction into mechanical energy is proposed. The efficiency for chemical energy transduction is also defined so as to be compared with Carnot…
Heat engines used to output useful work have important practical significance, which, in general, operate between heat baths of infinite size and constant temperature. In this paper we study the efficiency of a heat engine operating between…
Given a quantum heat engine that operates in a cycle that reaches maximal efficiency for a time-dependent Hamiltonian H(t) of the working substance, with overall controllable driving H(t) = g(t) H, we study the deviation of the efficiency…
We study internal work optimization over the energy levels of a generic hot quantum Otto engine. We find universal features in the efficiency that resembles the classical external power optimization over the coupling times to the thermal…
Although classical and quantum heat engines work on entirely different fundamental principles, there is an underlying similarity. For instance, the form of efficiency at optimal performance may be similar for both types of engines. In this…
We establish a theory of optimal efficiency and power for three-terminal thermoelectric engines which have two independent output electric currents and one input heat current. This set-up goes beyond the conventional heat engines with only…
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…
We employ the recently developed framework of the energetics of stochastic processes (called `stochastic energetics'), to re-analyze the Carnot cycle in detail, taking account of fluctuations, without taking the thermodynamic limit. We find…
Controlled quantum machines have matured significantly. A natural next step is to increasingly grant them autonomy, freeing them from time-dependent external control. For example, autonomy could pare down the classical control wires that…
We consider a paradigmatic quantum harmonic Otto engine operating in finite time. We investigate its performance when shortcut-to-adiabaticity techniques are used to speed up its cycle. We compute efficiency and power by taking the…
We investigate scaling of work and efficiency of a photonic Carnot engine with the number of quantum coherent resources. Specifically, we consider a generalization of the "phaseonium fuel" for the photonic Carnot engine, which was first…
In Markovian dynamics with the local detailed balance condition, we decompose the total entropy production rate into microscopic transitions. By applying this decomposition to the heat to work conversion process, we rigorously show that the…
Here, we investigate the maximum power and corresponding efficiency of thermoelectric generators through devising a set of protocols for the isothermal and adiabatic processes of thermoelectricity to build a Carnot-like thermoelectric…
We propose and analyse an autonomous engine, which combines ideas from electronic transport and self-oscillating heat engines. It is based on the electron-shuttling mechanism in conjunction with a rotational degree of freedom. We focus in…
Classical thermodynamics aimed to quantify the efficiency of thermodynamic engines by bounding the maximal amount of mechanical energy produced compared to the amount of heat required. While this was accomplished early on, by Carnot and…
Continuous particle exchange thermal machines require no time-dependent driving, can be realised in solid-state electronic devices, and miniaturised to nanometre scale. Quantum dots, providing a narrow energy filter and allowing to…
We determine the statistics of work in isothermal volume changes of a classical ideal gas consisting of a single particle. Combining our results with the findings of Lua and Grosberg [J. Chem. Phys. B 109, 6805 (2005)] on adiabatic…
A thermal current, generated by a temperature gradient between two reservoirs coupled to a carefully designed photonic or (micro-) electromechanical circuit, might induce non-conservative forces that impulse a mechanical degree of freedom…