Related papers: Reversing the direction of heat flow using quantum…
We propose a quantum heat engine composed of two superconducting transmission line resonators interacting with each other via an optomechanical-like coupling. One resonator is periodically excited by a thermal pump. The incoherently driven…
The second law of thermodynamics requires the overall thermal current to flow from hot to cold. However, it does not forbid a local thermal current from flowing from cold to hot. By coupling a harmonic system of three masses connected by a…
We investigate the dissipative dynamics of a quantum critical system in contact with a thermal bath. In analogy with the standard protocol employed to analyze aging, we study the response of a system to a sudden change of the bath…
We prove the second law of thermodynamics and the nonequilibirum fluctuation theorem for pure quantum states.The entire system obeys reversible unitary dynamics, where the initial state of the heat bath is not the canonical distribution but…
We investigate heat engines whose working substance is made of two coupled qubits performing a generalised Otto cycle by varying their applied magnetic field or their interaction strength during the compression and expansion strokes. During…
Superfluids can transport heat via simultaneous opposite flows of their spatially interpenetrating condensate and thermal components. While this internal convection is usually described within Landau's phenomenological two fluid…
Using holographic duality, we investigate thermalization process when two finite-size quantum critical systems are brought into thermal contact along a perfectly transmitting interface. Through real-time simulations of gravitational…
It is shown that a heat energy can be transformed in an electric energy of direct current by the use of an inhomogeneous superconducting ring. This trasformation is possible both at an iterative change of temperature and at an unaltered…
The study of thermodynamic fluctuations allows one to relate the free energy difference between two equilibrium states with the work done on a system through processes far from equilibrium. This finding plays a crucial role in the quantum…
Recent experiments at the nanoscales confirm that thermal rectifiers, the thermal equivalent of electrical diodes, can operate in the quantum regime. We present a thorough investigation of the effect of different particle exchange…
Controlling heat flow at the quantum level is essential for the development of next-generation thermal devices. We investigate thermal rectification in a quantum harmonic oscillator coupled to two thermal baths via both single-photon…
Thermodynamic principles are often deceptively simple and yet surprisingly powerful. We show how a simple rule, such as the net flow of energy in and out of a moving atom under nonequilibrium steady state condition, can expose the…
In this paper, we investigate the thermal quantum correlations in a semiconductor double quantum dot system. The device comprises a single electron in a double quantum dot subjected to a longitudinal magnetic field and a transverse magnetic…
Heat flow between a large ``bath'' and a smaller system brings them progressively closer to thermal equilibrium while increasing their entropy. Deviations from this trend are fluctuations involving a small fraction of a statistical ensemble…
We study the 1-d isotropic Heisenberg model of two spin-1/2 systems as a quantum heat engine. The engine undergoes a four-step Otto cycle where the two adiabatic branches involve changing the external magnetic field at a fixed value of the…
The thermalization of an isolated quantum system is described by quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, while these two subjects are still not fully consistent with each other. This leaves a less-explored region where both quantum and…
The time-dependent energy transfer in a driven quantum system strongly coupled to a heat bath is studied within an influence functional approach. Exact formal expressions for the statistics of energy dissipation into the different channels…
We review the main results and ideas showing that quantum correlations at finite temperatures (T), in particular quantum discord, are useful tools in characterizing quantum phase transitions that only occur, in principle, at the…
We analyze an autonomous thermoelectric engine composed of two superconducting qubits coupled to separate heat baths and connected by a Josephson junction. Work and heat are process quantities and not observables of the engine quantum…
We show that systems with negative specific heat can violate the zeroth law of thermodynamics. By both numerical simulations and by using exact expressions for free energy and microcanonical entropy it is shown that if two systems with the…