Related papers: Quantum mechanical bound for efficiency of quantum…
At the very foundation of the second law of thermodynamics lies the fact that no heat engine operating between two reservoires of temperatures $T_C\leq T_H$ can overperform the ideal Carnot engine: $\langle W \rangle / \langle Q_H \rangle…
We consider a paradigmatic quantum harmonic Otto engine operating in finite time. We investigate its performance when shortcut-to-adiabaticity techniques are used to speed up its cycle. We compute efficiency and power by taking the…
An analysis of efficiency and its bounds at maximum work output for Carnot-like heat engines is conducted. The heat transfer processes are described by the linear law with time-dependent heat conductance. The upper bound of efficiency is…
Quantization of energy is a quintessential characteristic of quantum systems. Here we analyze its effects on the operation of Otto cycle heat machines and show that energy quantization alone may alter and increase machine performance in…
Despite its idealizations, thermodynamics has proven its power as a predictive theory for practical applications. In particular, the Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency provides a benchmark for any real engine operating at maximal power. Here we…
We analyze the efficiency fluctuations of a coherent quantum heat engine coupled to a unimodal cavity using a standard full-counting statistics procedure. The engine's most likely efficiency obtained by computing the large-deviation…
We investigate a quantum heat engine with a working substance of two particles, one with a spin $1/2$ and the other with an arbitrary spin (spin $s$), coupled by Heisenberg exchange interaction, and subject to an external magnetic field.…
Developments in the thermodynamics of small quantum systems envisage non-classical thermal machines. In this scenario, energy fluctuations play a relevant role in the description of irreversibility. We experimentally implement a quantum…
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…
Giving a universal upper bound on the power output of heat engines is a long-standing open problem. We tackle this problem for generic quantum machines in self-contained formulation by carefully including the switching process of the…
Heat engines near the adiabatic limit typically assume a working medium at thermal equilibrium. However, quantum many-body systems often showcase conservation laws that hinder thermalization, leading to prethermalization in exotic…
The efficient conversion of thermal energy to mechanical work by a heat engine is an ongoing technological challenge. Since the pioneering work of Carnot, it is known that the efficiency of heat engines is bounded by a fundamental upper…
One of the fundamental questions in quantum thermodynamics concerns the decomposition of energetic changes into heat and work. Contrary to classical engines, the entropy change of the piston cannot be neglected in the quantum domain. As a…
The study of quantum thermodynamics is key to the development of quantum thermal machines. In contrast to most of the previous proposals based on discrete strokes, here we consider a working substance that is permanently coupled to two or…
In this review the debated rapport between thermodynamics and quantum mechanics is addressed in the framework of the theory of periodically-driven/controlled quantum-thermodynamic machines. The basic model studied here is that of a…
Employing currently available quantum technology, we design and implement a non-classically correlated SWAP heat engine that allows to achieve an efficiency above the standard Carnot limit. Such an engine also boosts the amount of…
We present a detailed analysis of slowly driven quantum thermal machines based on interacting qubits within the framework of the Lindblad master equation. By implementing a systematic expansion in the driving rate, we derive explicit…
We study a quantum harmonic Otto engine under a hot squeezed thermal reservoir with asymmetry between the two adiabatic branches introduced by considering different speeds of the driving protocols. In the first configuration, the driving…
We derive the statistics of the efficiency under the assumption that thermodynamic fluxes fluctuate with normal law, parametrizing it in terms of time, macroscopic efficiency, and a coupling parameter $\zeta$. It has a peculiar behavior: No…
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…