Related papers: Thermodynamic principles and implementations of qu…
While strong system-bath coupling produces rich and interesting phenomena, applications to quantum thermal engines have been so far pointing mainly at detrimental effects. The delicate trade-off between efficiency loss due to strong…
A quantum heat engine of a specific type is studied. This engine contains a single particle confined in the infinite square well potential with variable width and consists of three processes: the isoenergetic process (which has no classical…
We investigate the quantum thermodynamic cycle of a quantum heat engine carrying out an Otto thermodynamic cycle. We use the thermal properties of a moving heat bath with relativistic velocity with respect to the cold bath. As a working…
The Carnot cycle imposes a fundamental upper limit to the efficiency of a macroscopic motor operating between two thermal baths. However, this bound needs to be reinterpreted at microscopic scales, where molecular bio-motors and some…
We demonstrate how to incorporate a catalyst to enhance the performance of a heat engine. Specifically, we analyze efficiency in one of the simplest engines models, which operates in only two strokes and comprises of a pair of two-level…
Quantum heat cycles and quantum refrigerators are analyzed using various quantum systems as their working mediums. For example, to evaluate the efficiency and the work done of the Carnot cycle in the quantum regime, one can consider the…
Non-equilibrium effects may have a profound impact on the performance of thermal devices performing thermodynamic tasks such as refrigeration or heat pumping. The possibility of enhancing the performance of thermodynamic operations by means…
Machines are only Carnot efficient if they are reversible, but then their power output is vanishingly small. Here we ask, what is the maximum efficiency of an irreversible device with finite power output? We use a nonlinear scattering…
A dynamical model of a highly efficient heat engine is proposed, where an applied temperature difference maintains the motion of particles around the circuit consisting of two asymmetric narrow channels, in one of which the current flows…
We study the modification of the second law of thermodynamics for a quantum system interacting with a reservoir regarding quantum coherence. The whole system is isolated so that neither energy nor information is lost. It is discovered that…
From the steam engine to current nano-devices, the design of efficient thermal machines has been instrumental in modern societies. In its essence a thermal engine can be thought as a working substance, in contact with two or more baths,…
[...] By the beginning of the 20th century, the principles of thermodynamics were summarized into the so-called four laws, which were, as it turns out, definitive negative answers to the doomed quests for perpetual motion machines. As a…
Work extraction from a heat engine in a cycle by a quantum mechanical device (quantum "piston") is analyzed. The standard definition of work fails in the quantum domain. The correct extractable work and its efficiency bound are shown to…
In systems described by the scattering theory, there is an upper bound, lower than Carnot, on the efficiency of steady-state heat to work conversion at a given output power. We show that interacting systems can overcome such bound and…
Carnot's theorem poses a fundamental limit on the maximum efficiency achievable from an engine that works between two reservoirs at thermal equilibrium. We extend this result to the case of arbitrary nonthermal stationary reservoirs, even…
The performance of quantum heat engines is generally based on the analysis of a single cycle. We challenge this approach by showing that the total work performed by a quantum engine need not be proportional to the number of cycles.…
The optimization of finite-time thermodynamic heat engines was intensively explored recently, yet limited to few cycles, e.g. finite-time Carnot-like cycle. In this paper, we supplement a new type of finite-time engine with quantum Otto…
The efficiency of any heat engine, defined as the ratio of average work output to heat input, is bounded by Carnot's celebrated result. However, this measure is insufficient to characterize the properties of miniaturized heat engines…
The widely debated feasibility of thermodynamic machines achieving Carnot efficiency at finite power has been convincingly dismissed. Yet, the common wisdom that efficiency can only be optimal in the limit of infinitely-slow processes…
Advantages of quantum effects in several technologies, such as computation and communication, have already been well appreciated, and some devices, such as quantum computers and communication links, exhibiting superiority to their classical…