Related papers: Non-equilibrium quantum heat machines
We consider a minimal model of a quantum rotator composed of a single particle confined in an harmonic potential and driven by two temperature-biased heat reservoirs. In the case the particle potential is rendered asymmetric and rotated an…
We consider stationary driven systems in contact with a thermal equilibrium bath. There is a constant (Joule) heat dissipated from the steady system to the environment as long as all parameters are unchanged. As a natural generalization…
We show that coupled two level systems like qubits studied in quantum information can be used as a thermodynamic machine. At least three qubits or spins are necessary and arranged in a chain. The system is interfaced between two split baths…
Engines are systems and devices that convert one form of energy into another, typically into a more useful form that can perform work. In the classical setup, physical, chemical, and biological engines largely involve the conversion of heat…
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 heat flow between a quantum system and its reservoir is analyzed when initially both are in a separable thermal state and asymptotically approach a correlated equilibrium. General findings are illustrated for specific systems and…
The laws of thermodynamics strongly restrict the performance of thermal machines. Standard thermodynamics, initially developed for uncorrelated macroscopic systems, does not hold for microscopic systems correlated with their environments.…
A heat engine is a machine which uses the temperature difference between a hot and a cold reservoir to extract work. Here both reservoirs are quantum systems and a heat engine is described by a unitary transformation which decreases the…
We present the general theory of a quantum heat machine based on an $N$-level system (working medium) whose $N-1$ excited levels are degenerate, a prerequisite for steady-state interlevel coherence. Our goal is to find out: To what extent…
Established heat engines in quantum regime can be modeled with various quantum systems as working substances. For example, in the non-relativistic case, we can model the heat engine using infinite potential well as a working substance to…
As a quantum device, a quantum heat engine (QHE) is described by a Hermitian Hamiltonian.However, since it is an open system, reservoirs have to be imposed phenomenologically without any description in the context of quantum mechanics. A…
In the quest for high-performance quantum thermal machines, looking for an optimal thermodynamic efficiency is only part of the issue. Indeed, at the level of quantum devices, fluctuations become extremely relevant and need to be taken into…
The laws of thermodynamics put limits to the efficiencies of thermal machines. Analogues of these laws are now established for quantum engines weakly and passively coupled to the environment providing a framework to find improvements to…
There exists a consistent thermodynamical formalism with canonical definition of local temperatures which allows to extend the Carnot bound also to non-equilibrium baths, like those discussed in the Letter
Temperature determines the relative probability of observing a physical system in an energy state when that system is energetically in equilibrium with its environment. In this paper, we present a theory for engineering the temperature of a…
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…
The study of quantum thermodynamics is key to the development of quantum thermal machines. In contrast to most of the previous proposals based on discrete strokes, here we consider a working substance that is permanently coupled to two or…
All existing heat machines are dissipative open systems. Hence, they cannot operate fully coherently. We propose to replace this conventional thermodynamic paradigm by a completely different one, whereby heat machines are nonlinear coherent…
Quantum heat cycles and quantum refrigerators are analyzed using various quantum systems as their working mediums. For example, to evaluate the efficiency and the work done of the Carnot cycle in the quantum regime, one can consider the…
Nanotechnology has not only provided us the possibility of developing quantum machines but also noncanonical power sources able to drive them. Here we focus on studying the performance of quantum machines driven by arbitrary combinations of…