Related papers: Underdamped stochastic heat engine at maximum effi…
Delimiting the bounds of optimal performance for heat engines (HEs), refrigerators (REs), and heat pumps (HPs) is a central goal in thermodynamics. While low-dissipation (LD) models have proven valuable for this purpose, the role of heat…
Heat engines extract work by running cyclically between two heat reservoirs. When the two reservoirs are thermal and at different temperatures, the maximum efficiency of the engine is given by the Carnot limit. Here we consider a quantum…
We use the general formulation of irreversible thermodynamics and study the minimally nonlinear irreversible model of heat engines operating between a time-varying hot heat source of finite size and a cold heat reservoir of infinite size.…
Random noise can generate a unidirectional heat current across asymmetric nano objects in the absence (or against) a temperature gradient. We present a minimal model for a molecular-level stochastic heat pump that may operate arbitrarily…
Stochastic thermodynamics has revolutionized our understanding of heat engines operating in finite time. Recently, numerous studies have considered the optimal operation of thermodynamic cycles acting as heat engines with a given profile in…
The efficiency of macroscopic heat engines is restricted by the second law of thermodynamics. They can reach at most the efficiency of a Carnot engine. In contrast, heat currents in mesoscopic heat engines show fluctuations. Thus, there is…
We study the stochastic energetic exchanges in quantum heat engines. Due to microreversibility, these obey a fluctuation relation, called the heat engine fluctuation relation, which implies the Carnot bound: no machine can have an…
Achieving the Carnot efficiency at finite power is a challenging problem in heat engines due to the trade-off relation between efficiency and power that holds for general heat engines. It is pointed out that the Carnot efficiency at finite…
A long standing open problem whether a heat engine with finite power achieves the Carnot efficiency is investigated. We rigorously prove a general trade-off inequality on thermodynamic efficiency and time interval of a cyclic process with…
We analyze the efficiency fluctuations of a coherent quantum heat engine coupled to a unimodal cavity using a standard full-counting statistics procedure. The engine's most likely efficiency obtained by computing the large-deviation…
We present a unified perspective on nonequilibrium heat engines by generalizing nonlinear irreversible thermodynamics. For tight-coupling heat engines, a generic constitutive relation of nonlinear response accurate up to the quadratic order…
According to the laws of thermodynamics, no heat engine can beat the efficiency of a Carnot cycle. This efficiency traditionally comes with vanishing power output and practical designs, optimized for power, generally achieve far less.…
The possibility of utilizing quantum effects to enhance the performance of quantum heat engines has been an active topic of research, but how to enhance the performance by optimizing the engine parameters needs to be further studied. In…
Isothermal transformations are minimally dissipative but slow processes, as the system needs to remain close to thermal equilibrium along the protocol. Here, we show that smoothly modifying the system-bath interaction can significantly…
We consider a paradigmatic quantum harmonic Otto engine operating in finite time. We investigate its performance when shortcut-to-adiabaticity techniques are used to speed up its cycle. We compute efficiency and power by taking the…
We identify a realistic model of thermal heat engines and obtain the generalized efficiency, $\eta= 1- \left(\frac{T_c}{T_h}\right)^{1/\delta}$, where $\delta=1+\frac{1}{\gamma}$ and $\gamma$ is the ratio of thermal heat capacities of…
We study a molecular engine constituted by a gas of $N \sim 10^2$ molecules enclosed between a massive piston and a thermostat. The force acting on the piston and the temperature of the thermostat are cyclically changed with a finite period…
The problem of inference is applied to the process of work extraction from two constant heat capacity reservoirs, when the thermodynamic coordinates of the process are not fully specified. The information that is lacking, includes both the…
We analyze the efficiency of thermal engines (either quantum or classical) working with a single heat reservoir like atmosphere. The engine first gets an energy intake, which can be done in arbitrary non-equilibrium way e.g. combustion of…
Single-particle heat engines at atomic and colloidal scales obey the universal thermodynamic bounds on work and efficiency. Here, we translate these principles to the macroscale by building an athermal Stirling engine whose working medium…