Related papers: Efficiency fluctuations of small machines with unk…
Nanoscale machines are strongly influenced by thermal fluctuations, contrary to their macroscopic counterparts. As a consequence, even the efficiency of such microscopic machines becomes a fluctuating random variable. Using geometric…
We study the efficiency fluctuations of a stochastic heat engine made of $N$ interacting unicyclic machines and undergoing a phase transition in the macroscopic limit. Depending on $N$ and on the observation time, the machine can explore…
In the standard framework of thermodynamics the work produced or consumed in a process is a random variable whose average value is bounded by the change in the free energy of the system. This work is calculated without regard for the size…
Using the fluctuation theorem supplemented with geometric arguments, we derive universal features of the (long-time) efficiency fluctuations for thermal and isothermal machines operating under steady or periodic driving, close or far from…
We study the statistics of the efficiency in a class of isothermal cyclic machines with realistic coupling between the internal degrees of freedom. We derive, under fairly general assumptions, the probability distribution function for the…
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…
The stochastic efficiency [G. Verley et al., Nat. Commun. 5, 4721 (2014)] was introduced to evaluate the performance of energy-conversion machines in micro-scale. However, such an efficiency generally diverges when no heat is absorbed while…
At the dawn of thermodynamics, Carnot's constraint on efficiency of heat engines stimulated the formulation of one of the most universal physical principles, the second law of thermodynamics. In recent years, the field of heat engines…
Fluctuations strongly affect the dynamics and functionality of nanoscale thermal machines. Recent developments in stochastic thermodynamics have shown that fluctuations in many far-from-equilibrium systems are constrained by the rate of…
We present a method, based on characterizing efficiency fluctuations, to asses the performance of nanoscale thermoelectric junctions. This method accounts for effects typically arising in small junctions, namely, stochasticity in the…
The recently established connection between stochastic thermodynamics and fluctuating hydrodynamics is applied to a study of efficiencies in the coupled transport of heat and matter on a small scale. A stochastic model for a mesoscopic cell…
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…
Fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities become non-negligible and play an important role when the system size is small. We develop finite-time thermodynamics of fluctuations in microscopic heat engines whose environmental temperature and…
When engineering microscopic machines, increasing efficiency can often come at a price of reduced reliability due to the impact of stochastic fluctuations. Here we develop a general method for performing multi-objective optimisation of…
Two recent topics on a formal thermodynamic analogy of intracellular diffusivity fluctuations observed experimentally in normal/anomalous diffusion are reported. Not only the analogs of the quantity of heat and work as well as the internal…
Reducing work fluctuation and dissipation in heat engines or, more generally, information heat engines that perform feedback control is vital to maximize their efficiency. The same problem arises when we attempt to maximize the efficiency…
Miniaturized heat engines constitutes a fascinating field of current research. They are being studied theoretically as well as experimentally, with experiments involving colloidal particles and harmonic traps and even bacterial baths acting…
In the quest for high-performance quantum thermal machines, looking for an optimal thermodynamic efficiency is only part of the issue. Indeed, at the level of quantum devices, fluctuations become extremely relevant and need to be taken into…
The measurement of thermal fluctuations provides information about the microscopic state of a thermodynamic system and can be used in order to extract work from a single heat bath in a suitable cyclic process. We present a minimal framework…
Small thermodynamic systems exhibit peculiar behavior different from that observed in long-scale systems. Non-equilibrium processes taking place in those systems are strongly influenced by the presence of fluctuations which can be large.…