Related papers: Cycling tames power fluctuations near optimum effi…
We construct an example of heat engine whose efficiency at maximum power breaks down the previously derived bounds in the linear response regime. Such example takes a classical harmonic oscillator as the working substance undergoing a…
Stability is an important property of small thermal machines with fluctuating power output. We here consider a finite-time quantum Carnot engine based on a degenerate multilevel system and study the influence of its finite Hilbert space…
Carnot efficiency sets a fundamental upper bound on the heat engine efficiency, attainable in the quasi-static limit, albeit at the cost of completely sacrificing power output. In this Letter, we present a minimal heat engine model that can…
We investigate fluctuations of output work for a class of Stirling heat engines with working fluid composed of interacting units and compare these fluctuations to an average work output. In particular, we focus on engine performance close…
The stochastic efficiency [G. Verley et al., Nat. Commun. 5, 4721 (2014)] was introduced to evaluate the performance of energy-conversion machines in micro-scale. However, such an efficiency generally diverges when no heat is absorbed while…
According to Thermodynamics, the efficiency of a heat engine is upper bounded by Carnot efficiency. For macroscopic systems, the Carnot efficiency is, however, achieved only for quasi static processes. And, considerable attention has been…
This work obtains the efficiency at maximum power for a stochastic heat engine performing Carnot-like, Stirling-like and Ericsson-like cycles. For the mesoscopic engine a Brownian particle trapped by an optical tweezers is considered. The…
Heat engines constitute the major building blocks of modern technologies. However, conventional heat engines with higher power yield lesser efficiency and vice versa and respect various power-efficiency trade-off relations. This is also…
We study the maximum efficiency of a Carnot cycle heat engine based on a small system. It is revealed that due to the finiteness of the system, irreversibility may arise when the working substance contacts with a heat bath. As a result,…
The pursuit of achieving the maximum power in microscopic thermal engines has gained increasing attention in recent studies of stochastic thermodynamics. We employ the optimal control theory to study the performance of Brownian heat engines…
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…
Fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities become non-negligible and play an important role when the system size is small. We develop finite-time thermodynamics of fluctuations in microscopic heat engines whose environmental temperature and…
Macroscopic cyclic heat engines have been a major motivation for the emergence of thermodynamics. In the last decade, cyclic heat engines that have large fluctuations and operate at finite time were studied within the more modern framework…
In a stochastic heat engine driven by a cyclic non-equilibrium protocol, fluctuations in work and heat give rise to a fluctuating efficiency. Using computer simulations and tools from large deviation theory, we have examined these…
The Carnot engine sets an upper limit to the efficiency of a practical heat engine. An arbitrary irreversible engine is sometimes believed to behave closely as the Curzon-Ahlborn engine. Efficiency of the latter is obtained commonly by…
We perform an extensive analysis of passive as well as active micro-heat engines with different single-particle stochastic models. Using stochastic thermodynamics we calculate thermodynamic work, heat, entropy production and efficiency of…
Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relations express a trade-off between precision, defined as the noise-to-signal ratio of a generic current, and the amount of associated entropy production. These results have deep consequences for autonomous heat…
The thermodynamic properties of quantum heat engines are stochastic owing to the presence of thermal and quantum fluctuations. We here experimentally investigate the efficiency and nonequilibrium entropy production statistics of a spin-1/2…
A long standing open problem whether a heat engine with finite power achieves the Carnot efficiency is investigated. We rigorously prove a general trade-off inequality on thermodynamic efficiency and time interval of a cyclic process with…
We present a self contained formalism modelled after the Brownian motion of a quantum harmonic oscillator for describing the performance of microscopic Brownian heat engines like Carnot, Stirling and Otto engines. Our theory, besides…