Related papers: A single-atom heat engine
We demonstrate how a quantum Otto engine (QOE) can be implemented using a single ion and an always-on thermal environment. The internal degree of freedom of the ion is chosen as the working fluid, while the motional degree of freedom can be…
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…
Microscopic heat engines are microscale systems that convert energy flows between heat reservoirs into work or systematic motion. We have experimentally realized a minimal microscopic heat engine. It consists of a colloidal Brownian…
We propose a scheme for a single-atom quantum heat engine based on ultra-cold atom technologies. Building on the high degree of control typical of cold atom systems, we demonstrate that three paradigmatic heat engines -- Carnot, Otto and…
Information engines produce mechanical work through measurement and adaptive control. For information engines, the principal challenge lies in how to store the generated work for subsequent utilization. Here, we report an experimental…
A single-ion reservoir has been tested, and characterized in order to be used as a highly sensitive optical detector of electric signals arriving at the trapping electrodes. Our system consists of a single laser-cooled $^{40}$Ca$^+$ ion…
We propose speeding up a single ion heat pump based on a tapered ion trap. If a trapped ion is excited in an oscillatory motion axially the radial degrees of freedom are cyclically expanded and compressed such that heat can be pumped…
A cyclically working quantum mechanical engine that operates at a single temperature is proposed. Its energy input is delivered by a quantum measurement. The functioning of the engine does not require any feedback control. We analyze work,…
We studied a single atom trapped in an optical tweezer interacting with a thermal bath of ultracold atoms of a different species. Because of the collisions between the trapped atom and the bath atoms, the trapped atom undergoes changes in…
Recent works on the concatenation of two simple heat engines have shown that it may lead to non-monotonic variations in the efficiency and power with parameters like driving amplitudes and asymmetries in cycle periods. Motivated by this…
We introduce a new class of mesoscopic heat engines consisting of a tunnel junction coupled to a linear thermal bath. Work is produced by transporting electrons up against a voltage bias like in ordinary thermoelectrics but heat is…
A quantum thermal machine is an open quantum system coupled to hot and cold thermal baths. Thus, its dynamics can be well understood using the concepts and tools from non-Hermitian quantum systems. A hallmark of non-Hermiticity is the…
An ensemble of atoms in steady-state, whether in thermal equilibrium or not, has a well defined energy distribution. Since the energy of single atoms within the ensemble cannot be individually measured, energy distributions are typically…
A four stroke quantum engine which alternately interacts with a measurement apparatus and a single heat bath is discussed in detail with respect to the average work and heat as well as to the fluctuations of work and heat. The efficiency…
Colloidal heat engines extract power out of a fluctuating bath by manipulating a confined tracer. Considering a self-propelled tracer surrounded by a bath of passive colloids, we optimize the engine performances based on the maximum…
We analyse non-equilibrium Carnot-like cycles built with a colloidal particle in a harmonic trap, which is immersed in a fluid that acts as a heat bath. Our analysis is carried out in the overdamped regime. The cycle comprises four…
On the assumption that experimentally validated tabulated thermodynamic properties of saturated fluids published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology are accurate, a theoretical thermodynamic cycle can be demonstrated that…
We discuss whether, and under which conditions, it is possible to realize a heat engine simply by dynamically modulating the couplings between the quantum working medium and thermal reservoirs. For that purpose, we consider the paradigmatic…
In this work, we study quantum heat transport in a single trapped ion, driven by laser excitation and coupled to thermal reservoirs operating at different temperatures. Our focus lies in understanding how different laser coupling scenarios…
There are many exotic thermodynamic processes that are hard to study in nature. Here, we synthesize a structured environment to explore the extremes of thermodynamics. We present an engine running at extreme temperatures of above ten…