Related papers: Efficiency fluctuations in cyclic machines
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…
Miniaturized heat engines constitutes a fascinating field of current research. They are being studied theoretically as well as experimentally, with experiments involving colloidal particles and harmonic traps and even bacterial baths acting…
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…
For periodically driven systems, we derive a family of inequalities that relate entropy production with experimentally accessible data for the mean, its dependence on driving frequency, and the variance of a large class of observables. With…
The efficiency of an heat engine is traditionally defined as the ratio of its average output work over its average input heat. Its highest possible value was discovered by Carnot in 1824 and is a cornerstone concept in thermodynamics. It…
Understanding noisy information engines is a fundamental problem of non-equilibrium physics, particularly in biomolecular systems agitated by thermal and active fluctuations in the cell. By the generalized second law of thermodynamics, the…
We use the general formulation of irreversible thermodynamics and study the minimally nonlinear irreversible model of heat engines operating between a time-varying hot heat source of finite size and a cold heat reservoir of infinite size.…
Returning a system to a desired state under a force field involves a thermodynamic cost, i.e., {\it work}. This cost fluctuates for a small-scale system from one experimental realization to another. We introduce a general framework to…
Universal properties of efficiency at maximum power are investigated in a general setting. In particular, it is demonstrated how successive symmetries placed upon the dynamics manifest themselves at the macroscopic level. A general…
Here, we investigate the maximum power and corresponding efficiency of thermoelectric generators through devising a set of protocols for the isothermal and adiabatic processes of thermoelectricity to build a Carnot-like thermoelectric…
Stochastic fluctuations of molecular abundances are a ubiquitous feature of cellular processes and lead to significant cell-to-cell variability. Recent theoretical work established lower bounds for stochastic fluctuations in cells for broad…
We study the performance of a quantum Otto heat engine with two spins coupled by a Heisenberg interaction, taking into account not only the mean values of work and efficiency but also their fluctuations. We first show that, for this system,…
According to the laws of thermodynamics, no heat engine can beat the efficiency of a Carnot cycle. This efficiency traditionally comes with vanishing power output and practical designs, optimized for power, generally achieve far less.…
In the standard framework of thermodynamics the work produced or consumed in a process is a random variable whose average value is bounded by the change in the free energy of the system. This work is calculated without regard for the size…
We present a theoretical investigation of thermal fluctuation statistics in a molecular motor. Energy transfer in the motor is described using a multidimensional discrete master equation with nearest-neighbor hopping. In this theory, energy…
The thermal efficiency of the kinesin cycle at stalling is presently a matter of some debate, with published predictions ranging from 0 (A. W. C. Lau, D. Lacoste and K. Mallick, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 158102 (2007); D. Lacoste, A. W. C. Lau…
The response of thermodynamic systems perturbed out of an equilibrium steady-state is described by the reciprocal and the fluctuation-dissipation relations. The so-called fluctuation theorems extended the study of fluctuations far beyond…
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…
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…
Active matter constantly dissipates energy to power the self-propulsion of its microscopic constituents. This opens the door to designing innovative cyclic engines without any equilibrium equivalent. We offer a consistent thermodynamic…