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Non-equilibrium effects may have a profound impact on the performance of thermal devices performing thermodynamic tasks such as refrigeration or heat pumping. The possibility of enhancing the performance of thermodynamic operations by means…
A quantum thermal machine is an open quantum system coupled to hot and cold thermal baths. Thus, its dynamics can be well understood using the concepts and tools from non-Hermitian quantum systems. A hallmark of non-Hermiticity is the…
Quantum coherence provides a controllable thermodynamic resource that can raise or lower the effective temperature of a cavity mode, enabling efficiency tuning in quantum heat engines. Here, we derive analytic expressions for the effective…
The working substance fueling a quantum heat engine may contain coherence in its energy basis, depending on the dynamics of the engine cycle. In some models of quantum Otto heat engines, energy coherence has been associated with entropy…
We propose a quantum Stirling heat engine with an ensemble of harmonic oscillators as the working medium. We show that the efficiency of the harmonic oscillator quantum Stirling heat engine (HO-QSHE) at a given frequency can be maximized at…
The efficiency of small thermal machines is typically a fluctuating quantity. We here study the efficiency large deviation function of two exemplary quantum heat engines, the harmonic oscillator and the two-level Otto cycles. While the…
The quantum analog of Carnot cycles in few-particle systems consists of two quantum adiabatic steps and two isothermal steps. This construction is formally justified by use of a minimum work principle. It is then shown, without relying on…
The impact of quantum mechanics on thermodynamics, particularly on the principles and designs of heat machines (HM), has been limited by the incompatibility of quantum coherent evolution with the dissipative, open-system nature of all…
We study the effect of Kerr nonlinearity in quantum thermal machines having a Kerr-nonlinear oscillator as working substance and operating under the ideal quantum Otto cycle. We first investigate the efficiency of a Kerr-nonlinear heat…
When a reciprocating heat engine is started it eventually settles to a stable mode of operation. The approach of a first principle quantum heat engine toward this stable limit cycle is studied. The engine is based on a working medium…
In this work, we present a new framework for a relativistic quantum analouge of the classical Otto engine. Considering a single qubit as the working substance, we analyse its interaction with a massless quantum scalar field while undergoing…
We explore the dependence of the performance bounds of heat engines and refrigerators on the initial quantum state and the subsequent evolution of their piston, modeled by a quantized harmonic oscillator. Our goal is to provide a fully…
Quantum interference is at the heart of what sets the quantum and classical worlds apart. We demonstrate that quantum interference effects involving a many-body working medium is responsible for genuinely non-classical features in the…
We study the impact of cooperative many-body effects on the operation of periodically-driven quantum thermal machines, particularly heat engines and refrigerators. In suitable geometries, $N$ two-level atoms can exchange energy with the…
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,…
What are the resources that can be leveraged for a thermodynamic device to exhibit genuine quantum advantage? Typically, the answer to this question is sought in quantum correlations. In the present work, we show that quantum Otto engines…
We consider a thermodynamic machine in which the working fluid is a quantized harmonic oscillator that is controlled on timescales that are much faster than the oscillator period. We find that operation in this `fast' regime allows access…
The concept of thermal machines has evolved from the canonical steam engine to the recently proposed nanoscopic quantum systems as working fluids. The latter obey quantum open system dynamics and frequently operate in non-equilibrium…
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 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.…