Related papers: The most elementary heat to work conversion: work …
Quantum thermodynamics can be naturally phrased as a theory of quantum state transformation and energy exchange for small-scale quantum systems undergoing thermodynamical processes, thereby making the resource theoretical approach very well…
Quantum thermodynamic process involves manipulating and controlling quantum states to extract energy or perform computational tasks with high efficiency. There is still no efficientgeneral method to theoretically quantify the effect of the…
We introduce a new class of mesoscopic heat engines consisting of a tunnel junction coupled to a linear thermal bath. Work is produced by transporting electrons up against a voltage bias like in ordinary thermoelectrics but heat is…
In this review the debated rapport between thermodynamics and quantum mechanics is addressed in the framework of the theory of periodically-driven/controlled quantum-thermodynamic machines. The basic model studied here is that of a…
Photosynthesis is the basic process used by plants to convert light energy in reaction centers into chemical energy. The high efficiency of this process is not yet understood today. Using the formalism for the description of open quantum…
Recent work using tools from quantum information theory has shown that at the nanoscale where quantum effects become prevalent, there is not one thermodynamical second law but many. Derivations of these laws assume that an experimenter has…
Work extraction is one of the most central processes in quantum thermodynamics. However, the prior analysis of optimal extractable work has been restricted to a limited operational scenario where complete information about the initial state…
How should one define thermodynamic quantities (internal energy, work, heat, etc.) for quantum systems coupled to their environments strongly? We examine three (classically equivalent) definitions of a quantum system's internal energy under…
Evaluating the maximum amount of work extractable from a nanoscale quantum system is one of the central problems in quantum thermodynamics. Previous works identified the free energy of the input state as the optimal rate of extractable work…
The work content of non-equilibrium systems in relation to a heat bath is often analyzed in terms of expectation values of an underlying random work variable. However, we show that when optimizing the expectation value of the extracted…
Quantum thermal states are known to be passive, as required by the second law of thermodynamics. This paper investigates the potential for work extraction by coupling a thermal bath to a qubit of either spin, fermionic, or topological type,…
We compare definitions of the internal energy of an open quantum system and strategies to split the internal energy into work and heat contributions as given by four different approaches from autonomous system framework. Our discussion…
The famous Two-Temperature Model (TTM) used extensively in the investigations of energy relaxation in photo-excited systems originated in the seminal work of M. I. Kaganov, I. M. Lifshitz, and L. V. Tanatarov (KLT) in 1957. The idea that…
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…
There exist two formulations for quantum heat engine that models an energy transfer between two microscopic systems. One is semi-classical scenario, and the other is full quantum scenario. The former is formulated as a unitary evolution for…
Landauer's principle states that erasure of each bit of information in a system requires at least a unit of energy $k_B T \ln 2$ to be dissipated. In return, the blank bit may possibly be utilized to extract usable work of the amount $k_B T…
It is often claimed, that from a quantum system of d levels, and entropy S and heat bath of temperature T one can draw kT(ln d -S) amount of work. However, the usual arguments based on Szilard engine are not fully rigorous. Here we prove…
Temperature is usually defined for physical systems at thermal equilibrium. Nevertheless one may wonder if it would be possible to attribute a meaningful notion of temperature to an arbitrary quantum state, beyond simply the thermal (Gibbs)…
How much work can be extracted from a heat bath using a thermal machine? The study of this question has a very long tradition in statistical physics in the weak-coupling limit, applied to macroscopic systems. However, the assumption that…
Quantum heat engines employ as working agents multi-level systems instead of gas-filled cylinders. We consider particularly two-level agents such as electrons immersed in a magnetic field. Work is produced in that case when the electrons…