Related papers: Thermodynamic bound on heat to power conversion
A short introduction on quantum thermodynamics is given and three new topics are discussed: 1) Maximal work extraction from a finite quantum system. The thermodynamic prediction fails and a new, general result is derived, the ``ergotropy''.…
We analyze the performance of slowly driven meso- and micro-scale refrigerators and heat engines that operate between two thermal baths with small temperature difference. Using a general scaling argument, we show that such devices can work…
We derive a bound on generalized currents for Langevin systems in terms of the total entropy production in the system and its environment. For overdamped dynamics, any generalized current is bounded by the total rate of entropy production.…
Thermoelectric efficiency is defined as the ratio of power delivered to the load of a device to the rate of heat flow from the source. Till date, it has been studied in presence of thermodynamic constraints set by the Onsager reciprocal…
In a recent Letter [EPL, 118 (2017) 40003], Polettini and Esposito claimed that it is theoretically possible for a thermodynamic machine to achieve Carnot efficiency at divergent power output through the use of infinitely-fast processes. It…
We introduce heat engines working in the nano-regime that allow to extract a finite amount of deterministic work. We show that the efficiency of these cycles is strictly smaller than Carnot's, and we associate this difference with a…
We study a refrigerator model which consists of two $n$-level systems interacting via a pulsed external field. Each system couples to its own thermal bath at temperatures $T_h$ and $T_c$, respectively ($\theta\equiv T_c/T_h<1$). The…
Similar to the energy flowing process in traditional heat engines, information could be considered to flow in the communication systems with the form of energy and entropy. Combining the thermodynamic Carnot machine and the classical…
The energy conversion efficiency of far-from-equilibrium systems is generally limited by irreversible thermodynamic fluxes that make contact with different heat baths. For complex systems, the states of the maximum efficiency and the…
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…
We investigate the efficiency at maximum power (EMP) of irreversible quantum Carnot engines that perform finite-time cycles between two temperature tunable baths. The temperature form we adopt can be experimentally realized in squeezed…
The laws of thermodynamics strongly restrict the performance of thermal machines. Standard thermodynamics, initially developed for uncorrelated macroscopic systems, does not hold for microscopic systems correlated with their environments.…
Optimizing the performance of thermal machines is an essential task of thermodynamics. We here consider the optimization of information engines that convert information about the state of a system into work. We concretely introduce a…
Classical thermodynamics aimed to quantify the efficiency of thermodynamic engines by bounding the maximal amount of mechanical energy produced compared to the amount of heat required. While this was accomplished early on, by Carnot and…
The introduction of the quantum analogue of a Carnot engine based on a bath comprising of particles with a small amount of coherence initiated an active line of research on the harnessing of different quantum resources for the enhancement…
We analyse the process of conversion of near-field thermal radiation into usable work by considering the radiation emitted between two planar sources supporting surface phonon-polaritons. The maximum work flux that can be extracted from the…
We show that the maximum work that can be obtained from the thermal radiation emitted between two planar sources in the near-field regime is much larger than that corresponding to the blackbody limit. This quantity as well as an upper bound…
A theoretical thermodynamic cycle more efficient than an infinite set of Carnot engines is presented. This result is unexpected from the point of view of classical thermodynamics.
I consider the non-equilibrium DC transport of electrons through a quantum system with a thermoelectric response. This system may be any nanostructure or molecule modeled by the nonlinear scattering theory which includes Hartree-like…
We introduce the idea of weakly coherent collisional models, where the elements of an environment interacting with a system of interest are prepared in states that are approximately thermal, but have an amount of coherence proportional to a…