Related papers: Extracting maximum power from active colloidal hea…
Suspensions of self-propelled objects represent a novel paradigm in colloidal science. In such active baths traditional concepts, such as Brownian motion, fluctuation-dissipation relations, and work extraction from heat reservoirs, must be…
Information engines can convert thermal fluctuations of a bath at temperature $T$ into work at rates of order $k_\mathrm{B}T$ per relaxation time of the system. We show experimentally that such engines, when in contact with a bath that is…
We review a series of experimental studies of the thermodynamics of nonequilibrium processes at the microscale. In particular, in these experiments we studied the fluctuations of the thermodynamic properties of a single optically-trapped…
We present a thermal engine that exploits the \emph{cooperative superradiance} and \emph{superabsorption} of a sample of \(N\) two-level atoms. This engine operates using a single cold reservoir via cycles of collective pumping followed by…
We want to understand whether and to which extent the maximal (Carnot) efficiency for heat engines can be reached at a finite power. To this end we generalize the Carnot cycle so that it is not restricted to slow processes. We show that for…
We analyze a steady-state thermoelectric engine, whose working substance consists of two capacitively coupled quantum dots. One dot is tunnel-coupled to a hot reservoir serving as a heat source, the other one to two electrically biased…
Active fluctuations are known to play a significant role in the intracellular transport of passive objects. However, the effect of viscoelasticity of the environment in shaping such processes is relatively less understood. Here, with a…
The efficiency of cyclic heat engines is limited by the Carnot bound. This bound follows from the second law of thermodynamics and is attained by engines that operate between two thermal baths under the reversibility condition whereby the…
To optimize the performance of a heat engine in finite-time cycle, it is important to understand the finite-time effect of thermodynamic processes. Previously, we have shown that extra work is needed to complete a quantum adiabatic process…
A thermal current, generated by a temperature gradient between two reservoirs coupled to a carefully designed photonic or (micro-) electromechanical circuit, might induce non-conservative forces that impulse a mechanical degree of freedom…
We analyze work extraction from an autonomous (self-contained) heat-powered optomechanical setup. The initial state of the quantized mechanical oscillator plays a key role. As the initial mean amplitude of the oscillator decreases, the…
We consider the performance of periodically driven stochastic heat engines in the linear response regime. Reaching the theoretical bounds for efficiency and efficiency at maximum power typically requires full control over the design and the…
We construct a quantum critical Otto engine that is powered by finite temperature baths. We show that the work output of the engine shows universal power law behavior that depends on the critical exponents of the working medium, as well as…
We discuss the efficiency of a heat engine operating in a nonequilibrium steady state maintained by two heat reservoirs. Within the general framework of linear irreversible thermodynamics we derive a universal upper bound on the efficiency…
We consider two modifications of a recently proposed three-terminal quantum dot heat engine. First, we investigate the necessity of the thermalization assumption, namely that electrons are always thermalized by inelastic processes when…
We investigate the thermodynamics and fluctuations of a finite-time quantum Otto engine alternatively driven by a hot squeezed and a cold thermal reservoir. We show that reservoir squeezing significantly enhances the performance by…
We formulate the work output and efficiency for linear irreversible heat engines working between a finite-sized hot heat source and an infinite-sized cold heat reservoir until the total system reaches the final thermal equilibrium state…
Near-field heat engines are devices that convert the evanescent thermal field supported by a primary source into usable mechanical energy. By analyzing the thermodynamic performance of three-body near-field heat engines, we demonstrate that…
A microscopic heat engine is modeled as a Brownian particle in a sawtooh potential (with load) moving through a highly viscous medium driven by the thermal kick it gets from alternately placed hot and cold heat reservoirs. We found closed…
Optimal (reversible) processes in thermodynamics can be modelled as step-by-step processes, where the system is successively thermalized with respect to different Hamiltonians by an external thermal bath. However, in practice interactions…