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We investigate the operation of a qubit as a quantum thermal device within the repeated interaction framework, allowing for strong system-bath coupling and finite interaction times. We analyze two minimal models: an alternating-coupling…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-02-23 Gabrielle Barsky-Giles , Alessandro Prositto , Matthew Gerry , Dvira Segal

The efficiency of any heat engine, defined as the ratio of average work output to heat input, is bounded by Carnot's celebrated result. However, this measure is insufficient to characterize the properties of miniaturized heat engines…

Thermodynamic cycles are idealized processes that can convert heat into work or produce heat flow against a temperature gradient with the input of work. They remain an active area of research in modern stochastic thermodynamics. In…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-02-12 S. Liu , A. Datta , A. C. Barato

Micro-calorimetry offers significant potential as a quantitative method for studying the structure and function of biological systems, for instance, by probing the excess heat released by cellular or sub-cellular structures, isothermal or…

Biological Physics · Physics 2026-02-18 Faezeh Khodabandehlou , Christian Maes , Édgar Roldán

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…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-05-18 Étienne Fodor , Michael E. Cates

We investigate, in an analytical fashion, quantum Carnot cycles of a microscopic heat engine coupled to two nite heat reservoirs, whose internal cycles could own higher e ciency than the standard Carnot limit without consuming extra quantum…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-09-04 L. -L. Yan , M. -R. Yun , M. Li , S. -L. Su , K. -F. Cui , Gang Chen , M. Feng

We introduce and analyze a class of heat engines composed of interacting units, in which the thermal reservoir is associated with the neighborhood surrounding each unit. These systems can be mapped onto stochastic opinion models and are…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-09-10 Carlos E. Fiore

Understanding noisy information engines is a fundamental problem of non-equilibrium physics, particularly in biomolecular systems agitated by thermal and active fluctuations in the cell. By the generalized second law of thermodynamics, the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-09-01 Govind Paneru , Sandipan Dutta , Takahiro Sagawa , Tsvi Tlusty , Hyuk Kyu Pak

We present the stochastic thermodynamics analysis of an open quantum system weakly coupled to multiple reservoirs and driven by a rapidly oscillating external field. The analysis is built on a modified stochastic master equation in the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-05-12 Gregory Bulnes Cuetara , Andreas Engel , Massimiliano Esposito

Standard heat machines (engine, heat pump, refrigerator) are composed of a system ("working fluid") coupled to at least two equilibrium baths at different temperatures and periodically driven by an external device (piston or rotor) called…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-11-26 Rober Alicki , David Gelbwaser-Klimovsky

We study the energestics of a thermal motor driven by temperature differences, which consists of Brownian particles moving in a sawtooth potential with an external load where the viscous medium is alternately in contact with hot and cold…

Biological Physics · Physics 2009-11-11 Baoquan Ai , Liqiu Wang , Huizhang Xie , Lianggang Liu

This work obtains the efficiency at maximum power for a stochastic heat engine performing Carnot-like, Stirling-like and Ericsson-like cycles. For the mesoscopic engine a Brownian particle trapped by an optical tweezers is considered. The…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-08-02 O. Contreras-Vergara , N. Sánchez-Salas , G. Valencia-Ortega , J. I. Jiménez-Aquino

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…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2017-07-19 Hiroyasu Tajima , Masahito Hayashi

The thermodynamic properties of quantum heat engines are stochastic owing to the presence of thermal and quantum fluctuations. We here experimentally investigate the efficiency and nonequilibrium entropy production statistics of a spin-1/2…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-04-29 Tobias Denzler , Jonas F. G. Santos , Eric Lutz , Roberto Serra

In nano-scale systems coupled to finite-size reservoirs, the reservoir temperature may fluctuate due to heat exchange between the system and the reservoirs. To date, a stochastic thermodynamic analysis of heat, work and entropy production…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-04-03 Saulo V. Moreira , Peter Samuelsson , Patrick P. Potts

Thermal machines perform useful tasks--such as producing work, cooling, or heating--by exchanging energy, and possibly additional conserved quantities such as particles, with reservoirs. Here we consider thermal machines that perform more…

We consider quantum heat engines that operate between nonequilibrium stationary reservoirs. We evaluate their maximum efficiency from the positivity of the entropy production and show that it can be expressed in terms of an effective…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2014-09-29 Obinna Abah , Eric Lutz

We report on the study of student difficulties regarding heat engine in the context of Stirling cycle within upper-division undergraduate thermal physics course. An in-class test about a Stirling engine with a regenerator was taken by three…

Physics Education · Physics 2020-08-17 Lilin Zhu , Gang Xiang

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…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2014-10-27 Todd R. Gingrich , Grant M. Rotskoff , Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan , Phillip L. Geissler

Microscopic thermal machines that are of the dimensions of around few hundred nanometers have been the subject of intense study over the last two decades. Recently, it has been shown that the efficiency of such thermal engines can be…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-12-03 Aradhana Kumari , Sourabh Lahiri