Related papers: Two-level masers as heat-to-work converters

Quantum heat engines employ as working agents multi-level systems instead of gas-filled cylinders. We consider particularly two-level agents such as electrons immersed in a magnetic field. Work is produced in that case when the electrons…

We present a theoretical model of an on-chip three-level maser in a superconducting circuit based on a single artificial atom and pumped by a temperature gradient between thermal baths coupled to different interlevel transitions. We show…

Optical pump-probe signals can be viewed as work done by the matter while transferring the energy between two coherent baths (from pump to probe). In thermodynamics a heat engine, such as laser, is a device which performs similar work but…

Quantum coherence has been demonstrated in various systems including organic solar cells and solid state devices. In this letter, we report the lower and upper bounds for the performance of quantum heat engines determined by the efficiency…

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…

Standard heat machines (engine, heat pump, refrigerator) are composed of a system ("working fluid") coupled to at least two equilibrium baths at different temperatures and periodically driven by an external device (piston or rotor) called…

One of the fundamental questions in quantum thermodynamics concerns the decomposition of energetic changes into heat and work. Contrary to classical engines, the entropy change of the piston cannot be neglected in the quantum domain. As a…

Conventional continuous quantum heat engines with incoherent heat transfer perform poorly as they exploit two-body interactions between the system and hot or cold baths, thus having limited capability to outperform their classical…

The laws of thermodynamics are a cornerstone of physics. At the nanoscale, where fluctuations and quantum effects matter, there is no unique thermodynamic framework because thermodynamic quantities such as heat and work depend on the…

The paper offers a discrete thermodynamic model of lasers. Laser is an open system; its equilibrium is based on a balance of two thermodynamic forces, one related to the incoming pumping power and another to the emitted light. The basic…

Motivated by recent studies on models of particle and heat quantum pumps, we study similar simple classical models and examine the possibility of heat pumping. Unlike many of the usual ratchet models of molecular engines, the models we…

In the past, a number of heat engine models have been devised to apply the principles of thermodynamics to a laser. The best one known is the model using a negative temperature to describe population inversion. In this paper, we present a…

We introduce a new class of mesoscopic heat engines consisting of a tunnel junction coupled to a linear thermal bath. Work is produced by transporting electrons up against a voltage bias like in ordinary thermoelectrics but heat is…

All existing heat machines are dissipative open systems. Hence, they cannot operate fully coherently. We propose to replace this conventional thermodynamic paradigm by a completely different one, whereby heat machines are nonlinear coherent…

We introduce a new quantum heat engine, in which the working medium is a quantum system with a discrete level and a continuum. Net work done by this engine is calculated and discussed. The results show that this quantum heat engine behaves…

A heat engine is a machine which uses the temperature difference between a hot and a cold reservoir to extract work. Here both reservoirs are quantum systems and a heat engine is described by a unitary transformation which decreases the…

Collective behavior where a set of elements interact and generate effects that are beyond the reach of the individual non interacting elements, are always of great interest in physics. Quantum collective effects that have no classical…

We propose and analyze the theoretical model for a two-stroke quantum heat engine with one of the heat baths replaced by a non-selective quantum measurement. We show that the engine's invariant reference state depends on whether the cycle…

We investigate a microscopic motor based on an externally controlled two-level system. One cycle of the motor operation consists of two strokes. Within each stroke, the two-level system is in contact with a given thermal bath and its energy…

The heat engine, a machine that extracts useful work from thermal sources, is one of the basic theoretical constructs and fundamental applications of classical thermodynamics. The classical description of a heat engine does not include…