Related papers: Notes on heat engines and negative temperatures

An analysis of efficiency and its bounds at maximum work output for Carnot-like heat engines is conducted. The heat transfer processes are described by the linear law with time-dependent heat conductance. The upper bound of efficiency is…

We present here a machine that is capable of extracting work from a single heat bath. Although no significant temperature gradient is involved in the operation of the machine, yet the Carnot efficiency as high as one is achievable. Working…

Recent advances in experimental control of colloidal systems have spurred a revolution in the production of mesoscale thermodynamic devices. Functional "textbook" engines, such as the Stirling and Carnot cycles, have been produced in…

The efficient conversion of thermal energy to mechanical work by a heat engine is an ongoing technological challenge. Since the pioneering work of Carnot, it is known that the efficiency of heat engines is bounded by a fundamental upper…

From an entropy-based formulation of the first law of thermodynamics in the quantum regime, we investigate the performance of Otto-like and Carnot-like engines for a single-qubit working medium. Within this framework, the first law includes…

On the assumption that experimentally validated tabulated thermodynamic properties of saturated fluids published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology are accurate, a theoretical thermodynamic cycle can be demonstrated that…

We study the stochastic energetic exchanges in quantum heat engines. Due to microreversibility, these obey a fluctuation relation, called the heat engine fluctuation relation, which implies the Carnot bound: no machine can have an…

For a general thermodynamic system described as a Markov process, we prove a general lower bound for dissipation in terms of the square of the heat current, thus establishing that nonvanishing current inevitably implies dissipation. This…

The efficiency of macroscopic heat engines is restricted by the second law of thermodynamics. They can reach at most the efficiency of a Carnot engine. In contrast, heat currents in mesoscopic heat engines show fluctuations. Thus, there is…

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.…

According to classical Boltzmannian thermodynamics, the efficiency of a cyclic machine is strictly lower than one. Such a result is a straightforward consequence of the second principle of thermodynamics. Recent advances in the study of the…

We study how a quantum heat engine based on a single trapped ion performs in finite time. The always-on thermal environment acts like the hot bath, while the motional degree of freedom of the ion plays the role of the effective cold bath.…

Heat engines are key devices that convert thermal energy into usable energy. Strong thermoelectricity, at the basis of electrical heat engines, is present in superconducting spin tunnel barriers at cryogenic temperatures where conventional…

It is typically assumed, without justification, that a weak coupling between a system and a bath is a necessary condition for the equivalence of a canonical ensemble and a microcanonical ensemble. For instance, in a canonical ensemble,…

We consider a photo--Carnot engine that consists of a single--mode radiation field in an optical cavity. One the heat reservoirs is made of a beam of thermally entangled pairs of two--level atoms that interact resonantly with the cavity. We…

It is shown that the proof of [1] that the specific heat of the system of classical point particles interacting with each other via uniform gravitational potential energy may be negative is incorrect.

A quantum heat engine of a specific type is studied. This engine contains a single particle confined in the infinite square well potential with variable width and consists of three processes: the isoenergetic process (which has no classical…

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 consider measurement based single temperature quantum heat engine without feedback control, introduced recently by Yi, Talkner and Kim [Phys. Rev. E 96, 022108 (2017)]. Taking the working medium of the engine to be a one-dimensional…

We discuss a simple toy model which allows, in a natural way, for deriving central facts from thermodynamics such as its fundamental laws, including Carnot's version of the second principle. Our viewpoint represents thermodynamic systems as…