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Power and efficiency of heat engines are two conflicting objectives, and a tight efficiency bound is expected to give insights on the fundamental properties of the power-efficiency tradeoff. Here we derive an upper bound on the efficiency…
The efficiency of microscopic heat engines in a thermally heterogenous environment is considered. We show that, as a consequence of the recently discovered entropic anomaly, quasi-static engines, whose efficiency is maximal in a fluid at…
We model a microscopic heat engine as a particle hopping on a one-dimensional lattice in a periodic sawtooth potential, with or without load, assisted by the thermal kicks it gets from alternately placed hot and cold thermal baths. We find…
Optimisation of heat engines at the micro-scale has applications in biological and artificial nano-technology, and stimulates theoretical research in non-equilibrium statistical physics. Here we consider non-interacting overdamped particles…
Based on quantum thermodynamic processes, we make a quantum-mechanical (QM) extension of the typical heat engine cycles, such as the Carnot, Brayton, Otto, and Diesel cycles, etc. The temperature is not included in these QM engine cycles,…
We propose the minimally nonlinear irreversible heat engine as a new general theoretical model to study the efficiency at the maximum power $\eta^*$ of heat engines operating between the hot heat reservoir at the temperature $T_h$ and the…
The condition for stationary engines to attain the Carnot efficiency in and beyond the linear response regime is investigated. We find that this condition for finite-size engines is significantly different from that for macroscopic engines…
We model a Brownian heat engine as a Brownian particle that hops in a periodic ratchet potential where the ratchet potential is coupled with a linearly decreasing background temperature. It is shown that the efficiency of such Brownian heat…
The optimal power performance of a first principle quantum heat engine model shows friction-like phenomena when the internal fluid Hamiltonian does not commute with the external control field. The model is based on interacting…
The thermoelectric performance at a given output power of a voltage-probe heat engine, exposed to an external magnetic field, is investigated in linear irreversible thermodynamics. For the model, asymmetric parameter, general figures of…
We show the validity of some results of finite-time thermodynamics, also within the quasi-static framework of classical thermodynamics. First, we consider the efficiency at maximum work (EMW) from finite source and sink modelled as…
We consider a relativistic quantum heat engine that goes through a thermodynamical cycle consisting of stages involving laser-assisted cooling of electrons and the generation of Xray radiation. Quantum treatment of the processes makes it…
In a recent Letter [EPL, 118 (2017) 40003], Polettini and Esposito claimed that it is theoretically possible for a thermodynamic machine to achieve Carnot efficiency at divergent power output through the use of infinitely-fast processes. It…
Quantum many-body systems present substantial technical challenges from both analytical and numerical perspectives. Despite these difficulties, some progress has been made, including studies of interacting atomic gases and interacting…
Real quantum heat engines lack the separation of time and length scales that is characteristic for classical engines. They must be understood as open quantum systems in non-equilibrium with time-controlled coupling to thermal reservoirs as…
For heat engines working between two heat baths, functionality is often conditioned on a set of fixed constraints such as given internal structure of the engine and given temperatures for the baths. It is, however, important to devise heat…
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…
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…
Quantum thermodynamics supplies a consistent description of quantum heat engines and refrigerators up to the level of a single few level system coupled to the environment. Once the environment is split into three;a hot, cold and work…
We present a new outlook on the climate system thermodynamics, studying some of its macroscopic properties in terms of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. We review and clarify the notion of efficiency of the climate system by…