Related papers: Underdamped stochastic heat engine at maximum effi…
We study the maximum efficiency of a Carnot cycle heat engine based on a small system. It is revealed that due to the finiteness of the system, irreversibility may arise when the working substance contacts with a heat bath. As a result,…
Optimizing the performance of thermal machines is an essential task of thermodynamics. We here consider the optimization of information engines that convert information about the state of a system into work. We concretely introduce a…
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…
The Carnot theorem, one expression of the second law of thermodynamics, places a fundamental upper bound on the efficiency of heat engines operating between two heat baths. The Carnot theorem can be stated in a more generalized form for…
We model a Brownian heat engine as a Brownian particle that hops in a periodic ratchet potential where the ratchet potential is coupled with a linearly decreasing background temperature. It is shown that the efficiency of such Brownian heat…
The Carnot heat engine sets an upper bound on the efficiency of a heat engine. As an ideal, reversible engine, a single cycle must be performed in infinite time, and so the Carnot engine has zero power. However, there is nothing in…
We derive the efficiency at maximal power of a scale-invariant (critical) quantum junction in exact form. Both Fermi and Bose statistics are considered. We show that time-reversal invariance is spontaneously broken. For fermions we…
The efficiency at maximum power (EMP) of heat engines operating as generators is one corner stone of finite-time thermodynamics, the Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency $\eta_{\rm CA}$ being considered as a universal upper bound. Yet, no valid…
The efficiency at the maximum power (EMP) for finite-time Carnot engines established with the low-dissipation model, relies significantly on the assumption of the inverse proportion scaling of the irreversible entropy generation $\Delta…
We investigate a Brownian heat engine wherein a particle moves through a periodic ratchet potential under an exponentially decreasing temperature profile, a spatial configuration that closely resembles experimentally realizable conditions…
Thermodynamic constraints impose a trade-off between power and efficiency in heat engines, preventing the simultaneous achievement of high power and high efficiency. For classical microscopic engines, explicit inequalities have been…
Following the result by Skrzypczyk et al., arXiv:1009.0865, that certain self-contained quantum thermal machines can reach Carnot efficiency, we discuss the functioning of self-contained quantum thermal machines and show, in a very general…
The unavoidable irreversible losses of power in a heat engine are found to be of quantum origin. Following thermodynamic tradition a model quantum heat engine operating by the Otto cycle is analyzed. The working medium of the model is…
We have performed an extensive analysis of a single particle stochastic heat engine constructed by manipulating a Brownian particle in a time dependent harmonic potential. The cycle consists of two isothermal steps at different temperatures…
We study how to achieve the ultimate power in the simplest, yet non trivial, model of a thermal machine, namely a two-level quantum system coupled to two thermal baths. Without making any prior assumption on the protocol, via optimal…
We derive the statistics of the efficiency under the assumption that thermodynamic fluxes fluctuate with normal law, parametrizing it in terms of time, macroscopic efficiency, and a coupling parameter $\zeta$. It has a peculiar behavior: No…
We model a microscopic heat engine as a particle hopping on a one-dimensional lattice in a periodic sawtooth potential, with or without load, assisted by the thermal kicks it gets from alternately placed hot and cold thermal baths. We find…
Quantum coherence has been demonstrated in various systems including organic solar cells and solid state devices. In this letter, we report the lower and upper bounds for the performance of quantum heat engines determined by the efficiency…
If the work per cycle of a quantum heat engine is averaged over an appropriate prior distribution for an external parameter $a$, the work becomes optimal at Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency. More general priors of the form $\Pi(a) \propto…
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.…