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Related papers: Carnot's theorem and Szil\'ard engine

200 papers

According to Thermodynamics, the efficiency of a heat engine is upper bounded by Carnot efficiency. For macroscopic systems, the Carnot efficiency is, however, achieved only for quasi static processes. And, considerable attention has been…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-05-03 Takaaki Monnai

We propose a theoretical model for a colloidal heat engine driven by a feedback protocol that is able to fully convert the net heat absorbed by the hot bath into extracted work. The feedback protocol, inspired by gambling strategies,…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-09-27 Tarek Tohme , Valentina Bedoya , Costantino di Bello , Léa Bresque , Gonzalo Manzano , Édgar Roldán

Engines are open systems that can generate work cyclically, at the expense of an external disequilibrium. They are ubiquitous in nature and technology, but the course of mathematical physics over the last 300 years has tended to make their…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-09-01 Robert Alicki , David Gelbwaser-Klimovsky , Alejandro Jenkins

Heat engines extract work by running cyclically between two heat reservoirs. When the two reservoirs are thermal and at different temperatures, the maximum efficiency of the engine is given by the Carnot limit. Here we consider a quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2014-02-03 Johannes Roßnagel , Obinna Abah , Ferdinand Schmidt-Kaler , Kilian Singer , Eric Lutz

In this work we include, for the Carnot cycle, irreversibilities of linear finite rate of heat transferences between the heat engine and its reservoirs, heat leak between the reservoirs and internal dissipations of the working fluid. A…

Classical Physics · Physics 2015-06-26 G Aragon-Gonzalez , A. Canales-Palma , A. Leon-Galicia , J. R. Morales-Gomez

Achieving the Carnot efficiency at finite power is a challenging problem in heat engines due to the trade-off relation between efficiency and power that holds for general heat engines. It is pointed out that the Carnot efficiency at finite…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-03-03 Kosuke Miura , Yuki Izumida , Koji Okuda

Carnot established in 1824 that the efficiency of cyclic engines operating between a hot bath at absolute temperature $T_{hot}$ and a bath at a lower temperature $T_{cold}$ cannot exceed $1-T_{cold}/T_{hot}$. We show that linear oscillators…

Physics Education · Physics 2016-09-08 J. Arnaud , L. Chusseau , F. Philippe

We study the modification of the second law of thermodynamics for a quantum system interacting with a reservoir regarding quantum coherence. The whole system is isolated so that neither energy nor information is lost. It is discovered that…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-10-12 Yu-Han Ma , C. L. Liu , C. P. Sun

Motivated by the recent work by Mandal and Jarzynski on autonomous Maxwell demon information engine, we have extended their model by introducing two different heat baths. The system (demon) is coupled to a memory register (tape) and a work…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-11-23 Shubhashis Rana , A. M. Jayannavar

We obtain generalizations of the Kelvin-Planck, Clausius, and Carnot statements of the second law of thermodynamics, for situations involving information processing. To this end, we consider an information reservoir (representing, e.g. a…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2013-10-21 Sebastian Deffner , Christopher Jarzynski

The constraint relation for efficiency and power is crucial to design optimal heat engines operating within finite time. We find a universal constraint between efficiency and output power for heat engines operating in the low-dissipation…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-10-09 Yu-Han Ma , Dazhi Xu , Hui Dong , Chang-Pu Sun

A long standing open problem whether a heat engine with finite power achieves the Carnot efficiency is investigated. We rigorously prove a general trade-off inequality on thermodynamic efficiency and time interval of a cyclic process with…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2017-08-18 Naoto Shiraishi , Hiroyasu Tajima

In Szilard's engine, measurement and feedback allows to extract work from an equilibrium environment, a process otherwise forbidden by the laws of thermodynamics. Recent theoretical developments have established fluctuation theorems and…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2025-11-14 David Barker , Sebastian Lehmann , Kimberly A. Dick , Peter Samuelsson , Ville Maisi , Patrick P. Potts

The Clausius-Clapeyron relation and its analogs in other first-order phase transitions, such as type-I superconductors, are derived using very elementary methods, without appealing to the more advanced concepts of entropy or Gibbs free…

Popular Physics · Physics 2022-01-12 Oskar Grocholski , Kornel Howil , Stanisław Rakowski , Piotr Maksymiuk

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…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-03-04 Mohit Lal Bera , Sergi Julià-Farré , Maciej Lewenstein , Manabendra Nath Bera

We discussed the criterion for usefully comparing an irreversible cycle with a reversible one, and show that the lost work cannot be determined by the usual cycle diagrams, contrary to what has been found in the literature. To better…

Physics Education · Physics 2022-08-23 Joaquim Anacleto

Following the rising interest in quantum information science, the extension of a heat engine to the quantum regime by exploring microscopic quantum systems has seen a boom of interest in the last decade. Although quantum coherence in the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-03-14 Wentao Ji , Zihua Chai , Mengqi Wang , Yuhang Guo , Xing Rong , Fazhan Shi , Changliang Ren , Ya Wang , Jiangfeng Du

A heat engine operating in the one-shot finite-size regime, where systems composed of a small number of quantum particles interact with hot and cold baths and are restricted to one-shot measurements, delivers fluctuating work. Further,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-02-15 Mohit Lal Bera , Maciej Lewenstein , Manabendra Nath Bera

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…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2015-09-23 Sebastian Pilgram , David Sanchez , Rosa Lopez

Relativistic thermal devices offer a unique platform for understanding the interplay between motion, quantum fields, and thermodynamics, revealing phenomena inaccessible to stationary systems. We consider a two-qubit SWAP heat engine whose…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-08-18 Dimitris Moustos , Obinna Abah