Related papers: Steering heat engines: a truly quantum Maxwell dem…
A Maxwell demon can reduce the entropy of a quantum system by performing measurements on its environment. The nonsignaling theorem prevents the demon from affecting the average state of the system. We study the preparations of quantum…
In Szilard's engine, measurement and feedback allows to extract work from an equilibrium environment, a process otherwise forbidden by the laws of thermodynamics. Recent theoretical developments have established fluctuation theorems and…
From the steam engine to current nano-devices, the design of efficient thermal machines has been instrumental in modern societies. In its essence a thermal engine can be thought as a working substance, in contact with two or more baths,…
There are many exotic thermodynamic processes that are hard to study in nature. Here, we synthesize a structured environment to explore the extremes of thermodynamics. We present an engine running at extreme temperatures of above ten…
Following recent work by Marathe and Parrondo [PRL, 104, 245704 (2010)], we construct a classical Hamiltonian system whose energy is reduced during the adiabatic cycling of external parameters, when initial conditions are sampled…
In this article, we show that a quantum gas, a collection of massive, non-interacting, indistinguishable quantum particles can be realized as a thermodynamic machine as an artifact of energy quantization and hence bears no classical analog.…
The interplay between quantum-mechanical properties, such as coherence, and classical notions, such as energy, is a subtle topic at the forefront of quantum thermodynamics. The traditional Carnot argument limits the conversion of heat to…
Quantum speed limit (QSL) time for open systems driven by classical fields is studied in the presence of thermal bosonic environments. The decoherence process is quantitatively described by the time-convolutionless master equation. The…
The existence of quantum correlations that allow one party to steer the quantum state of another party is a counterintuitive quantum effect that has been described already at the beginning of the past century. Steering occurs if…
The question of whether quantum coherence is a resource beneficial or detrimental to the performance of quantum heat engines has been thoroughly studied but remains undecided. To isolate the contribution of coherence, we analyze the…
Quantum tunneling allows electrons to be transferred between two regions separated by an energetically forbidden barrier. Performing a position measurement that finds a particle in the barrier forces the tunneling electrons to transition…
In Szilard's engine, a demon measures a one-particle gas and applies feedback to extract work from thermal fluctuations, embodying Maxwell's notion that information reduces thermodynamic entropy - an apparent second-law violation. The…
Recent progress in manipulating individual quantum systems enables the exploration of engines exploiting non-classical resources. One of the most appealing is the energy provided by the inherent backaction of quantum measurements. While a…
We develop a geometric framework to describe the thermodynamics of microscopic heat engines driven by slow periodic temperature variations and modulations of a mechanical control parameter. Covering both the classical and the quantum…
We introduce a new quantum heat engine, in which the working medium is a quantum system with a discrete level and a continuum. Net work done by this engine is calculated and discussed. The results show that this quantum heat engine behaves…
Isothermal information engines operate by extracting net work from a single heat bath through measurement and feedback control. In this work, we analyze a realistic active Szilard engine operating on a single active particle by means of…
In this paper we investigate the relationship between the efficiency of a cyclic quantum heat engine with the Hilbert space dimension of the thermal baths. By means of a general inequality, we show that the Carnot efficiency can be obtained…
A quantum Maxwell demon is a device that can lower the entropy of a quantum system by providing it with purity. The functionality of such a quantum demon is rooted in a quantum mechanical SWAP operation exchanging mixed and pure states. We…
We introduce quantum information engines that extract work from quantum states and a single thermal reservoir. They may operate under three general conditions: i/ Unitarily Steered evolution (US); ii/ Irreversible Thermalization (IT) and…
Quantum heat machines (QHMs) models generally assume a weak coupling to the baths. This supposition is grounded in the separability principle between systems and allows the derivation of the evolution equation for this case. In the weak…