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The thermodynamics of the Curzon-Ahlborn engine, which is a prototype of endoreversible engines, is elucidated. In particular, their criterion for adiabatic equilibration is revised. The so-called irreversibility of endoreversible engines…
Continuous particle exchange thermal machines require no time-dependent driving, can be realised in solid-state electronic devices, and miniaturised to nanometre scale. Quantum dots, providing a narrow energy filter and allowing to…
The stochastic efficiency of effusion as a thermal engine is investigated within the framework of stochastic thermodynamics. Explicit results are obtained for the probability distribution of the efficiency both at finite times and in the…
Here, we investigate the maximum power and corresponding efficiency of thermoelectric generators through devising a set of protocols for the isothermal and adiabatic processes of thermoelectricity to build a Carnot-like thermoelectric…
Diverse models of engines energised by quantum-coherent, hence non-thermal, baths allow the engine efficiency to transgress the standard thermodynamic Carnot bound. These transgressions call for an elucidation of the underlying mechanisms.…
We present the spin quantum Otto machine under different optimization criterion when function either as a heat engine or a refrigerator. We examine the optimal performance of the heat engine and refrigerator depending on their efficiency,…
Quantum coherence has been shown to impact the operational capabilities of quantum systems performing thermodynamic tasks in a significant way, and yet the possibility and conditions for genuine coherence-enhanced thermodynamic operation…
The optimal control of open quantum systems is a challenging task but has a key role in improving existing quantum information processing technologies. We introduce a general framework based on Reinforcement Learning to discover optimal…
We consider a quantum engine driven by repeated weak interactions with a heat bath of identical three-level atoms. This model was first introduced by Scully et al. [Science, 2003], who showed that coherence between the energy-degenerate…
Some of the oldest and most important applications of thermodynamics are operations of refrigeration as well as production of useful energy. Part of the efforts to understand and develop thermodynamics in the quantum regime have been…
We identify and interpret the possible quantum thermal machine regimes with a transverse-field Ising model as the working substance. In general, understanding the emergence of such regimes in a many-body quantum system is challenging due to…
The efficiency of cyclic heat engines is limited by the Carnot bound. This bound follows from the second law of thermodynamics and is attained by engines that operate between two thermal baths under the reversibility condition whereby the…
We study optimal control strategies to optimize the relaxation rate towards the fixed point of a quantum system in the presence of a non-Markovian dissipative bath. Contrary to naive expectations that suggest that memory effects might be…
One of the principal objectives of quantum thermodynamics is to explore quantum effects and their potential beneficial role in thermodynamic tasks like work extraction or refrigeration. So far, even though several papers have already shown…
We study the optimization of the performance of arbitrary periodically driven thermal machines. Within the assumption of fast modulation of the driving parameters, we derive the optimal cycle that universally maximizes the extracted power…
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…
We derive a bound on the efficiency of thermal engines that can be sharper than Carnot's limit. It is a function of statistical correlations between the engine internal state and Hamiltonian, can be saturated even in finite-time cycles, and…
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…
The Carnot engine sets an upper limit to the efficiency of a practical heat engine. An arbitrary irreversible engine is sometimes believed to behave closely as the Curzon-Ahlborn engine. Efficiency of the latter is obtained commonly by…
Optimal (reversible) processes in thermodynamics can be modelled as step-by-step processes, where the system is successively thermalized with respect to different Hamiltonians by an external thermal bath. However, in practice interactions…