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The three-terminal heat device consisting of a cavity and coupled to a heat bath is established. By tuning the temperatures of the electrodes and the phonon bath, the device can function as a heat engine or a refrigerator. We study the…
From the steam engine to current nano-devices, the design of efficient thermal machines has been instrumental in modern societies. In its essence a thermal engine can be thought as a working substance, in contact with two or more baths,…
We study thermodynamic processes in contact with a heat bath that may have an arbitrary time-varying periodic temperature profile. Within the framework of stochastic thermodynamics, and for models of thermo-dynamic engines in the idealized…
We revisit the optimization of performance of finite-time Carnot machines satisfying the low-dissipation assumption. The standard procedure seeks to optimize an objective function, such as power output of the engine, over the durations of…
Improvement of thermoelectric systems in terms of performance and range of applications relies on progress in materials science and optimization of device operation. In this chapter, we focuse on optimization by taking into account the…
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 adopt a geometric approach to describe the performance of adiabatic quantum machines, operating under slow time-dependent driving and in contact to two or more reservoirs with a temperature bias during all the cycle. We show that the…
Low-dissipation model and the endoreversible model of heat engines are two of the most commonly studied models of machines in finite-time thermodynamics. In this paper, we compare the performance characteristics of these two models under…
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…
We apply advanced methods of control theory to open quantum systems and we determine finite-time processes which are optimal with respect to thermodynamic performances. General properties and necessary conditions characterizing optimal…
The thermoelectric performance at a given output power of a voltage-probe heat engine, exposed to an external magnetic field, is investigated in linear irreversible thermodynamics. For the model, asymmetric parameter, general figures of…
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…
We quantify the prior information to infer the optimal characteristics for a constrained thermodynamic process of maximum work extraction for a pair of non-identical finite systems. The total entropy of the whole system remains conserved.…
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.…
In traditional thermodynamics the Carnot cycle yields the ideal performance bound of heat engines and refrigerators. We propose and analyze a minimal model of a heat machine that can play a similar role in quantum regimes. The minimal model…
We analyze the steady-state formalism for optimizing the cooling power of a thermoelectric refrigerator (TER), unifying the endoreversible and exoreversible approximations within one framework. Although the cooling power is non-optimizable…
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…
In this paper we investigate the relationship between the efficiency of a cyclic quantum heat engine with the Hilbert space dimension of the thermal baths. By means of a general inequality, we show that the Carnot efficiency can be obtained…
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.…
We study a refrigerator model which consists of two $n$-level systems interacting via a pulsed external field. Each system couples to its own thermal bath at temperatures $T_h$ and $T_c$, respectively ($\theta\equiv T_c/T_h<1$). The…