Related papers: Efficiency at the maximum power output for simple …
A quantum-mechanical analog of the Carnot engine reversibly working at vanishing temperature, shortly termed the quantum-mechanical Carnot engine, is discussed. A general formula for the efficiency of such an engine with an arbitrary…
We investigate a kinetic heat engine model constituted by particles enclosed in a box where one side acts as a thermostat and the opposite side is a piston exerting a given pressure. Pressure and temperature are varied in a cyclical…
We investigate a stochastic heat engine based on an over-damped particle diffusing on the positive real axis in an externally driven time-periodic log-harmonic potential. The periodic driving is composed of two isothermal and two adiabatic…
The triumph of heat engines is their ability to convert the disordered energy of thermal sources into useful mechanical motion. In recent years, much effort has been devoted to generalizing thermodynamic notions to the quantum regime,…
We present a new outlook on the climate system thermodynamics, studying some of its macroscopic properties in terms of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. We review and clarify the notion of efficiency of the climate system by…
We analyse non-equilibrium Carnot-like cycles built with a colloidal particle in a harmonic trap, which is immersed in a fluid that acts as a heat bath. Our analysis is carried out in the overdamped regime. The cycle comprises four…
Endoreversible engine cycles are a cornerstone of finite-time thermodynamics. We show that endoreversible Stirling engines operating with a one-component plasma as working medium run at maximal power output with the Curzon-Ahlborn…
Mesoscopic thermoelectric heat engine is much anticipated as a device that allows us to utilize with high efficiency wasted heat inaccessible by conventional heat engines. However, the derivation of the heat current in this engine seems to…
Situations where a spontaneous process of energy or matter transfer is enhanced by an external device are widespread in nature (human sweating system, enzyme catalysis, facilitated diffusion across bio-membranes, industrial heat…
Two-reservoir thermochemical engines are established in by using near-independent particles (including Maxwell-Boltzmann, Fermi-Dirac, and Bose-Einstein particles) as the working substance. Particle and heat fluxes can be formed based on…
A suitable way of quantifying work for microscopic quantum systems has been constantly debated in the field of quantum thermodynamics. One natural approach is to measure the average increase in energy of an ancillary system, called the…
The autonomous heat engine is a model system of autonomous nonequilibrium systems like biological cells, exploiting nonequilibrium flow for operations. As the Carnot engine has essentially contributed to the equilibrium thermodynamics,…
We derive the efficiency at maximal power of a scale-invariant (critical) quantum junction in exact form. Both Fermi and Bose statistics are considered. We show that time-reversal invariance is spontaneously broken. For fermions we…
It was reported that, if and only if the specific heat, correlation length, and dynamical exponents $\alpha, \nu$ and $z$, fulfill the condition $\alpha-z\nu>0$, the phase transitions can enable a quantum heat engine to approach Carnot…
Information can improve heat engine performance, but the underlying principles are still not so clear. Here we introduce a Carnot information machine (CIE) and obtain a quantitative relationship between the engine performance and…
Thermodynamic constraints impose a trade-off between power and efficiency in heat engines, preventing the simultaneous achievement of high power and high efficiency. For classical microscopic engines, explicit inequalities have been…
Particle-exchange heat engines operate without moving parts or time-dependent driving, relying solely on static energy-selective transport. Here, we realize a particle-exchange quantum heat engine based on a single diradical molecule, only…
We study the performance of a quantum Otto cycle using a harmonic work medium and undergoing collisional dynamics with finite-size reservoirs. We span the dynamical regimes of the work strokes from strongly non-adiabatic to quasi-static…
We investigate fluctuations of output work for a class of Stirling heat engines with working fluid composed of interacting units and compare these fluctuations to an average work output. In particular, we focus on engine performance close…
We present a unified perspective on nonequilibrium heat engines by generalizing nonlinear irreversible thermodynamics. For tight-coupling heat engines, a generic constitutive relation of nonlinear response accurate up to the quadratic order…