Related papers: Universality and scaling of optimal heat engines
The concept of thermal machines has evolved from the canonical steam engine to the recently proposed nanoscopic quantum systems as working fluids. The latter obey quantum open system dynamics and frequently operate in non-equilibrium…
The study of thermal heat engines was pivotal to establishing the principles of equilibrium thermodynamics, with implications far wider than only engine optimization. For nonequilibrium systems, which by definition dissipate energy even at…
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…
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…
Heat engines constitute the major building blocks of modern technologies. However, conventional heat engines with higher power yield lesser efficiency and vice versa and respect various power-efficiency trade-off relations. This is also…
Quantum cycles in established heat engines can be modeled with various quantum systems as working substances. For example, a heat engine can be modeled with an infinite potential well as the working substance to determine the efficiency and…
While strong system-bath coupling produces rich and interesting phenomena, applications to quantum thermal engines have been so far pointing mainly at detrimental effects. The delicate trade-off between efficiency loss due to strong…
Owing to the ubiquity of synchronization in the classical world, it is interesting to study its behavior in quantum systems. Though quantum synchronisation has been investigated in many systems, a clear connection to quantum technology…
We consider a quantum engine driven by repeated weak interactions with a heat bath of identical three-level atoms. This model was first introduced by Scully et al. [Science, 2003], who showed that coherence between the energy-degenerate…
The Carnot cycle is a prototype of ideal heat engine to draw mechanical energy from the heat flux between two thermal baths with the maximum efficiency, dubbed as the Carnot efficiency $\eta_{\mathrm{C}}$. Such efficiency can only be…
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…
The characterization and control of quantum effects in the performance of thermodynamic tasks may open new avenues for small thermal machines working in the nanoscale. We study the impact of coherence in the energy basis in the operation of…
The optimization of finite-time thermodynamic heat engines was intensively explored recently, yet limited to few cycles, e.g. finite-time Carnot-like cycle. In this paper, we supplement a new type of finite-time engine with quantum Otto…
Sequential (or collisional) engines have been put forward as an alternative candidate for the realisation of reliable engine setups. Despite this, the role of the different stages and the influence of the intermediate reservoirs is not well…
Collective effects have attracted remarkable recent interest, not only for their presence in several systems in nature but also for the possibility of being used for the construction of efficient engine setups. Notwithstanding, little is…
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…
The heat engine, a machine that extracts useful work from thermal sources, is one of the basic theoretical constructs and fundamental applications of classical thermodynamics. The classical description of a heat engine does not include…
The performance of quantum heat engines is generally based on the analysis of a single cycle. We challenge this approach by showing that the total work performed by a quantum engine need not be proportional to the number of cycles.…
Steady-state quantum thermal machines are typically characterized by a continuous flow of heat between different reservoirs. However, at the level of discrete stochastic realizations, heat flow is unraveled as a series of abrupt quantum…
Sadi Carnot's theorem regarding the maximum efficiency of heat engines is considered to be of fundamental importance in thermodynamics. This theorem famously states that the maximum efficiency depends only on the temperature of the heat…