Related papers: Conversion of heat to work: An efficient inchworm

We study the efficiency of frictional thermal ratchets driven by finite frequency driving force and in contact with a heat bath. The efficiency exhibits varied behavior with driving frequency. Both nonmonotonic and monotonic behavior have…

Phononics has attracted much attention driven by the promising potentials offered by devices such as thermal diodes, thermal transistors, and thermal memristors. Heat shuttling (or heat ratcheting, or heat pumping) is a phenomenon exhibited…

We introduce a model of an active quantum particle and discuss its properties. The particle has a set of internal states that mediate exchanges of heat with external reservoirs. Heat is then converted into motion by means of a spin-orbit…

Self-propelled nanoparticles moving through liquids offer the possibility of creating advanced applications where such nanoswimmers can operate as artificial molecular-sized motors. Achieving control over the motion of nanoswimmers is a…

Self-propelling active matter relies on the conversion of energy from the undirected, nanoscopic scale to directed, macroscopic motion. One of the challenges in the design of synthetic active matter lies in the control of dynamic states, or…

Active contributions to fluctuations are a direct consequence of metabolic energy consumption in living cells. Such metabolic processes continuously create active forces, which deform the membrane to control motility, proliferation as well…

We provide an intuitive platform for engineering exciton transfer dynamics. We show that careful consideration of the spectral density, which describes the system-bath interaction, leads to opportunities to engineer the transfer of an…

We study a simple two-dimensional model for motion of an elastic filament subject to internally generated stresses and show that wave-like propagating shapes which can propel the filament can be induced by a self-organized mechanism via a…

We study numerically the overdamped motion of particles driven in a two dimensional ratchet potential. In the proposed design, of the so-called geometrical-ratchet type, the mean velocity of a single particle in response to a constant force…

We show that work can be extracted from a two-level system (spin) coupled to a bosonic thermal bath. This is possible due to different initial temperatures of the spin and the bath, both positive (no spin population inversion) and is…

A paradigm for isothermal, mechanical rectification of stochastic fluctuations is introduced in this paper. The central idea is to transform energy injected by random perturbations into rigid-body rotational kinetic energy. The prototype…

Active matter consumes energy from the environment and transforms it into mechanical work. Notable examples from biology include cell division, bacterial swarms, and muscle contraction. In this work, we investigate the nature of active…

We present a very simple model for realizing directed transport with cold atoms in a pair of periodically flashed optical lattices. The origin of this ratchet effect is explained and its robustness demonstrated under imperfections typical…

We address the problem of heat conduction in 1-D nonlinear chains; we show that, acting on the parameter which controls the strength of the on site potential inside a segment of the chain, we induce a transition from conducting to…

Directed motion of liquid droplets is of considerable importance in various industrial processes. Despite extensive advances in this field of research, our understanding and the ability to control droplet dynamics at high temperature remain…

Exploiting the energy of randomly moving active agents such as bacteria is a fascinating way to power a microdevice. Here we show, by simulations, that a chain-grafted disk-like colloid can rotate unidirectionally when immersed in a thin…

There is evidence that taking the time average of the work performed by a thermally isolated system effectively "transforms" the adiabatic process into an isothermal one. This approach allows inherent quantities of adiabatic processes to be…

Transport phenomena in spatially periodic systems far from thermal equilibrium are considered. The main emphasize is put on directed transport in so-called Brownian motors (ratchets), i.e. a dissipative dynamics in the presence of thermal…

We consider the dynamics of a droplet on a vibrating fluid bath. This hydrodynamic quantum analog system is shown to elicit the canonical behavior of damped-driven systems, including a period doubling route to chaos. By approximating the…

Ratchets are devices able to rectify an otherwise oscillatory behavior by exploiting an asymmetry of the system. In rocking ratchets the asymmetry is induced through a proper choice of external forces and modulations of nonlinear symmetric…