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A cyclic thermodynamic heat engine runs most efficiently if it is reversible. Carnot constructed such a reversible heat engine by combining adiabatic and isothermal processes for a system containing an ideal gas. Here, we present an example…
Conventional continuous quantum heat engines with incoherent heat transfer perform poorly as they exploit two-body interactions between the system and hot or cold baths, thus having limited capability to outperform their classical…
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…
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…
Based on quantum thermodynamic processes, we make a quantum-mechanical (QM) extension of the typical heat engine cycles, such as the Carnot, Brayton, Otto, and Diesel cycles, etc. The temperature is not included in these QM engine cycles,…
To optimize the performance of a heat engine in finite-time cycle, it is important to understand the finite-time effect of thermodynamic processes. Previously, we have shown that extra work is needed to complete a quantum adiabatic process…
The second law of thermodynamics dictates that heat flows spontaneously from a high-temperature entity to a lower-temperature one. Yet, recent advances have demonstrated that quantum correlations between a system and its thermal environment…
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,…
From an entropy-based formulation of the first law of thermodynamics in the quantum regime, we investigate the performance of Otto-like and Carnot-like engines for a single-qubit working medium. Within this framework, the first law includes…
We propose a two-stage cycle for an optimized linear-irreversible heat engine that operates, in a finite time, between a hot (cold) reservoir and a finite auxiliary system acting as a sink (source) in the first (second) stage. Under the…
Recent studies have investigated the role of entanglement in the operation of a two-qubit system as a heat engine, showing that work can be extracted from a single heat bath without direct heat dissipation between the two-qubit system and…
For heat engines working between two heat baths, functionality is often conditioned on a set of fixed constraints such as given internal structure of the engine and given temperatures for the baths. It is, however, important to devise heat…
A quantum-mechanical analog of the Carnot engine reversibly working at vanishing temperature, shortly termed the quantum-mechanical Carnot engine, is discussed. A general formula for the efficiency of such an engine with an arbitrary…
Quantum heat engines provide attractive means in quantum thermodynamics for studying the fundamentals of the flow of heat and work. Previous experimental implementations of heat engines operating at the level of a few excitation quanta have…
We show that coupled two level systems like qubits studied in quantum information can be used as a thermodynamic machine. At least three qubits or spins are necessary and arranged in a chain. The system is interfaced between two split baths…
We study a quantum Otto engine operating on the basis of a helical spin- 1/2 multiferroic chain with strongly coupled magnetic and ferroelectric order parameters. The presence of a finite spin chirality in the working substance enables…
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…
We suggest alternative quantum Otto engines, using heat bath algorithmic cooling with partner pairing algorithm instead of isochoric cooling. Liquid state nuclear magnetic resonance systems in one entropy sink are considered as working…
We consider a model of heat engine operating in the microscopic regime: the two-stroke engine. It produces work and exchanges heat in two discrete strokes that are separated in time. The working body of the engine consists of two $d$-level…
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…