Related papers: Carnot's theorem and Szil\'ard engine
Classically, the power generated by an ideal thermal machine cannot be larger than the Carnot limit. This profound result is rooted in the second law of thermodynamics. A hot question is whether this bound is still valid for microengines…
According to the second law, the efficiency of cyclic heat engines is limited by the Carnot bound that is attained by engines that operate between two thermal baths under the reversibility condition whereby the total entropy does not…
We report on the study of student difficulties regarding heat engine in the context of Stirling cycle within upper-division undergraduate thermal physics course. An in-class test about a Stirling engine with a regenerator was taken by three…
The so-called information-thermodynamics link has been created in a series of works starting from Maxwell demon and established by the idea of transforming information into work in the though experiment of Szilard which then evolved into…
In Markovian dynamics with the local detailed balance condition, we decompose the total entropy production rate into microscopic transitions. By applying this decomposition to the heat to work conversion process, we rigorously show that the…
Quantum heat cycles and quantum refrigerators are analyzed using various quantum systems as their working mediums. For example, to evaluate the efficiency and the work done of the Carnot cycle in the quantum regime, one can consider the…
We demonstrate that the system composed of a gyrotropic particle out of thermal equilibrium with vacuum can be regarded as a heat engine. Such a particle, initially at rest, will experience a fluctuation-induced torque and start to rotate,…
We consider the efficiency at maximum power of a quantum Otto engine, which uses a spin or a harmonic system as its working substance and works between two heat reservoirs at constant temperatures $T_h$ and $T_c$ $ (<T_h)$. Although 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…
By establishing a connection between bi-directional Helmholtz machines and information theory, we propose a generalized Helmholtz machine. Theoretical and experimental results show that given \textit{shallow} architectures, the generalized…
We introduce a simple two-level heat engine to study the efficiency in the condition of the maximum power output, depending on the energy levels from which the net work is extracted. In contrast to the quasi-statically operated Carnot…
In 1929, Leo Szilard invented a feedback protocol in which a hypothetical intelligence called Maxwell's demon pumps heat from an isothermal environment and transduces it to work. After an intense controversy that lasted over eighty years;…
In the Second Law of Thermodynamics which is a macroscopic physical law that states that in any isolated system, entropy can only increase and order, or organization, can only decrease. This means that in the long run, energy will always…
We report on a lossless information engine that converts nearly all available information from an error-free feedback protocol into mechanical work. Combining high-precision detection at resolution of 1 nm with ultrafast feedback control,…
Thermodynamics is traditionally concerned with systems comprised of a large number of particles. Here we present a framework for extending thermodynamics to individual quantum systems, including explicitly a thermal bath and work-storage…
After a brief historical perspective, we introduce the key notions of work and heat for quantum systems, to then apply them to quantum engines operating on quantum Otto and Carnot cycles. The irreversible and dissipative character of the…
Electrical heat engines driven by the Johnson-Nyquist noise of resistors are introduced. They utilize Coulomb's law and the fluctuation-dissipation theorem of statistical physics that is the reverse phenomenon of heat dissipation in a…
Abstract We perform an experiment in which a quantum heat engine works under two reservoirs, one at a positive spin temperature and the other at an effective negative spin temperature i.e., when the spin system presents population…
We propose a two-stage cycle for an optimized linear-irreversible heat engine that operates, in a finite time, between a hot (cold) reservoir and a finite auxiliary system acting as a sink (source) in the first (second) stage. Under the…
Despite its idealizations, thermodynamics has proven its power as a predictive theory for practical applications. In particular, the Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency provides a benchmark for any real engine operating at maximal power. Here we…