Related papers: Efficiency estimation for an equilibrium version o…
A long standing open problem whether a heat engine with finite power achieves the Carnot efficiency is investigated. We rigorously prove a general trade-off inequality on thermodynamic efficiency and time interval of a cyclic process with…
It is nearly 150 years since Maxwell challenged the validity of the second law of thermodynamics by imagining a tiny creature who could sort the molecules of a gas in such a way that would decrease entropy without exerting any work. The…
Thermal machines perform useful tasks--such as producing work, cooling, or heating--by exchanging energy, and possibly additional conserved quantities such as particles, with reservoirs. Here we consider thermal machines that perform more…
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…
Theoretical thermoelectric nanophysics models of low-dimensional electronic heat engine and refrigerator devices, comprising two-dimensional hot and cold reservoirs and an interconnecting filtered electron transport mechanism have been…
Following the result by Skrzypczyk et al., arXiv:1009.0865, that certain self-contained quantum thermal machines can reach Carnot efficiency, we discuss the functioning of self-contained quantum thermal machines and show, in a very general…
While quantum measurements have been shown to constitute a resource for operating quantum thermal machines, the nature of the energy exchanges involved in the interaction between system and measurement apparatus is still under debate. In…
To induce transport, detailed balance must be broken. A common mechanism is to bias the dynamics with a thermodynamic fuel, such as chemical energy. An intriguing, alternative strategy is for a Maxwell demon to effect the bias using…
We study dynamic cooling, where an externally driven two-level system is cooled via reservoir, a quantum system with initial canonical equilibrium state. We obtain explicitly the minimal possible temperature $T_{\rm min}>0$ reachable for…
Situations where a spontaneous process of energy or matter transfer is enhanced by an external device are widespread in nature (human sweating system, enzyme catalysis, facilitated diffusion across bio-membranes, industrial heat…
We argue that Maxwell's demon is incapable of creating a nonzero temperature difference. Hence, it does not destroy equilibrium and the second law is never at risk, contrary to the claim by Maxwell and accepted by many. It is therefore…
Given a system with a finite heat capacity and a heat reservoir, and two values of initial temperatures, $T_+$ and $T_- (< T_+)$, we enquire, in which case the optimal work extraction is larger: when the reservoir is an infinite source at…
A demonic being, introduced by Maxwell, to miraculously create thermal non-equilibrium and violate the Second law of thermodynamics, has been among the most intriguing and elusive wishful concepts for over 150 years. Maxwell and his…
Thermal energy storage (TES) systems coupled with heat pumps offer significant potential for improving building energy efficiency by shifting electricity demand to off-peak hours. However, conventional operating strategies maintain…
Autonomous Maxwell demon is a new type of information engine proposed by Mandal and Jarzynski, which can produce work by exploiting an information tape. Here, we show that a stochastic resetting mechanism can be used to improve the…
Here, we investigate the maximum power and corresponding efficiency of thermoelectric generators through devising a set of protocols for the isothermal and adiabatic processes of thermoelectricity to build a Carnot-like thermoelectric…
The compute-storage framework is responsible for data storage and processing, and acts as the digital chassis of all upper-level businesses. The performance of the framework affects the business's processing throughput, latency, jitter, and…
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…
We analyze the steady-state formalism for optimizing the cooling power of a thermoelectric refrigerator (TER), unifying the endoreversible and exoreversible approximations within one framework. Although the cooling power is non-optimizable…
While quantum measurement theories are built around density matrices and observables, the laws of thermodynamics are based on processes such as are used in heat engines and refrigerators. The study of quantum thermodynamics fuses these two…