Related papers: Surpassing the Carnot Efficiency by extracting imp…
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…
Quantum measurement of a system can change its mean energy, as well as entropy. A selective measurement (classical or quantum) can be used as a "Maxwell's demon" to power a single-temperature heat engine, by decreasing the entropy. Quantum…
In recent years we have witnessed a concentrated effort to make sense of thermodynamics for small-scale systems. One of the main difficulties is to capture a suitable notion of work that models realistically the purpose of quantum machines,…
Can collective quantum effects make a difference in a meaningful thermodynamic operation? Focusing on energy storage and batteries, we demonstrate that quantum mechanics can lead to an enhancement in the amount of work deposited per unit…
Heat engines constitute the major building blocks of modern technologies. However, conventional heat engines with higher power yield lesser efficiency and vice versa and respect various power-efficiency trade-off relations. This is also…
The Carnot statement of the second law of thermodynamics poses an upper limit on the efficiency of all heat engines. Recently, it has been studied whether generic quantum features such as coherence and quantum entanglement could allow for…
Quantum correlations that typically develop between a quantum battery and its charger reduce the amount of work extractable from the battery. We show that by coupling the system with an additional environment that can be continuously…
This study examines the steady state characteristics of work extraction in a two cell and three cell quantum battery interacting with multiple thermal reservoirs. Employing the quantum master equation framework within the Born-Markov…
The question of whether quantum coherence is a resource beneficial or detrimental to the performance of quantum heat engines has been thoroughly studied but remains undecided. To isolate the contribution of coherence, we analyze the…
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 study a quantum Stirling cycle which extracts work using quantized energy levels of a potential well. The work and the efficiency of the engine depend on the length of the potential well, and the Carnot efficiency is approached in a low…
The Carnot heat engine sets an upper bound on the efficiency of a heat engine. As an ideal, reversible engine, a single cycle must be performed in infinite time, and so the Carnot engine has zero power. However, there is nothing 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…
Free energy fixes the maximum work of a thermodynamic process once the state and Hamiltonian are specified. A work-extraction task asks a different question: how much average work can a single device realize across several preparations and…
Various engine types are thermodynamically equivalent in the quantum limit of small 'engine action'. Our previous derivation of the equivalence is restricted to Markovian heat baths and to implicit classical work repository (e.g., laser…
In this work, we investigate the amount of energy that can be extracted or charged through unitary operations when only minimal information about the state is known. Assuming knowledge of only the mean energy of the state, we start by…
Quantum batteries can be charged by performing a work ``instantaneously'' in the limit of a large number of cells, achieving a so-called quantum advantage. In general, the work exhibits statistics that can be represented by a…
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…
One of the most fundamental tasks in quantum thermodynamics is extracting energy from one system and subsequently storing this energy in an appropriate battery. Both of these steps, work extraction and charging, can be viewed as cyclic…
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…