Related papers: Thermodynamic coupling rule for far-from-equilibri…
We establish the foundations of a nonequilibrium theory of quantum thermodynamics for noninteracting open quantum systems strongly coupled to their reservoirs within the framework of the nonequilibrium Green functions (NEGF). The energy of…
The relationship between thermodynamics and statistical physics is valid in the thermodynamic limit - when the number of particles becomes very large. Here, we study thermodynamics in the opposite regime - at both the nano scale, and when…
Thermoelectric generators are particularly suitable to investigate the irreversible processes which govern the coupled transport of matter and heat in solid-state systems. We study the efficiency at maximum power in the strong coupling…
We study thermodynamic limits when controllers operate with only partial observability of internal correlations in multipartite systems. Understanding the costs imposed by lack of information is crucial in settings where agents must act…
Thermodynamic relations are derived from first principles of mechanics for non-equilibrium processes. Since the key role herein is played by the law of increase of entropy, the latter is analyzed at first. It is shown that its derivation…
Thermoelectric energy conversion is a direct but low-efficiency process, which precludes the development of long-awaited wide-scale applications. As a breakthrough permitting a drastic performance increase is seemingly out of reach, we…
The thermodynamics of quantum systems coupled to periodically modulated heat baths and work reservoirs is developed. By identifying affinities and fluxes, the first and second law are formulated consistently. In the linear response regime,…
The laws of thermodynamics strongly restrict the performance of thermal machines. Standard thermodynamics, initially developed for uncorrelated macroscopic systems, does not hold for microscopic systems correlated with their environments.…
Continuous particle exchange thermal machines require no time-dependent driving, can be realised in solid-state electronic devices, and miniaturised to nanometre scale. Quantum dots, providing a narrow energy filter and allowing to…
We present the closed loop approach to linear nonequilibrium thermodynamics considering a generic heat engine dissipatively connected to two temperature baths. The system is usually quite generally characterized by two parameters: the…
The thermodynamics of small quantum many-body systems strongly coupled to a heat bath at low temperatures with non-Markovian behavior are new challenges for quantum thermodynamics, as traditional thermodynamics is built on large systems…
We consider the thermodynamics of chemical coupling from the viewpoint of free energy transduction efficiency. In contrast to an external parameter-driven stochastic energetics setup, the dynamic change of the equilibrium distribution…
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.…
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…
We study heat transfers in a single level quantum dot strongly coupled to fermionic reservoirs and subjected to a time-dependent protocol modulating the dot energy as well as the dot-reservoir coupling strength. The dynamics is described…
We apply advanced methods of control theory to open quantum systems and we determine finite-time processes which are optimal with respect to thermodynamic performances. General properties and necessary conditions characterizing optimal…
We derive a general quantum exchange fluctuation theorem for multipartite systems with arbitrary coupling strengths by taking into account the informational contribution of the back-action of the quantum measurements, which contributes to…
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…
We present a thermodynamic framework for the refined weak coupling limit. In this limit the interaction between system and environment is weak, but not negligible. As a result, the system dynamics becomes non-Markovian breaking divisibility…
We present an approach based on a density matrix expansion to study thermodynamic properties of a quantum system strongly coupled to two or more baths. For slow external driving of the system, we identify the adiabatic and nonadiabatic…