Related papers: Stirling Stuff
A longstanding problem in natural science and later in physics was the understanding of the existence of ferromagnetism and its disappearance under heating to high temperatures. Although a qualitative description was possible by the…
Engines are systems and devices that convert one form of energy into another, typically into a more useful form that can perform work. In the classical setup, physical, chemical, and biological engines largely involve the conversion of heat…
This Colloquium is a fast journey through the build-up of key thermodynamical concepts, i.e. work, heat and irreversibility -- and how they relate to information. Born at the time of industrial revolution to optimize the exploitation of…
The radiation pressure exerted by incoherent light on diverse surfaces is examined. The thermodynamic rule, first given by Carnot in 1824, describes the limitation to the amount of free energy that can be obtained from a source of thermal…
Our brains are able to exploit coarse physical models of fluids to solve everyday manipulation tasks. There has been considerable interest in developing such a capability in robots so that they can autonomously manipulate fluids adapting to…
We explore the performance of three- and two-stroke heat engines with a qutrit working substance in charging two-level quantum batteries. We first classify the heat engines into two groups depending on their working methods. The first type…
Classical thermodynamics is unrivalled in its range of applications and relevance to everyday life. It enables a description of complex systems, made up of microscopic particles, in terms of a small number of macroscopic quantities, such as…
Heat engines are considered a valuable resource for modern society. The development of these systems leads to the production of heat engines with high efficiency despite their small size, called quantum heat engines. Among these, the…
There are many exotic thermodynamic processes that are hard to study in nature. Here, we synthesize a structured environment to explore the extremes of thermodynamics. We present an engine running at extreme temperatures of above ten…
Optical tweezers can confine position as well as orientation of a Brownian particle by simultaneously exerting restoring force and torque on it. Here we have proposed the theoretical model of a microscopic Stirling engine, using a passive…
A major limitations for many heat engines is that their functioning demands on-line control, and/or an external fitting between environmental parameters (e.g. temperatures of thermal baths) and internal parameters of the engine. We study a…
Work extraction from a heat engine in a cycle by a quantum mechanical device (quantum "piston") is analyzed. The standard definition of work fails in the quantum domain. The correct extractable work and its efficiency bound are shown to…
We analyze an autonomous thermoelectric engine composed of two superconducting qubits coupled to separate heat baths and connected by a Josephson junction. Work and heat are process quantities and not observables of the engine quantum…
We study a four-stroke Otto engine whose working fluid is a quantum Ising chain. The thermodynamic cycle consists in sweeps of the transverse magnetic field occurring in thermal isolation, alternated by thermalisation strokes with…
This article presents a comparative analysis of quantum Otto and Stirling engines using atom-photon interactions as the working substance. Two models are considered: a two-level Jaynes-Cummings system and a four-level atomic system confined…
This author is not a philosopher nor historian of science, but an engineering thermodynamicist. In that regard and in addition to various philosophical "why & how" treatises and existing historical analyses, the physical and logical "what…
Simulations can help unravel the complicated ways in which molecular structure determines function. Here, we use molecular simulations to show how slight alterations of a molecular motor's structure can cause the motor's typical dynamical…
Molecular machines consist of either a single protein or a macromolecular complex composed of protein and RNA molecules. Just like their macroscopic counterparts, each of these nano-machines has an engine that "transduces" input energy into…
The impossibility of separating into work and heat the energy transmitted between two subsystems through a movable piston is analyzed in this article. The process here described, although "quasi-static", is not reversible. It is shown that…
The efficiency of an heat engine is traditionally defined as the ratio of its average output work over its average input heat. Its highest possible value was discovered by Carnot in 1824 and is a cornerstone concept in thermodynamics. It…