Related papers: Work fluctuations due to partial thermalizations i…
Reducing work fluctuation and dissipation in heat engines or, more generally, information heat engines that perform feedback control is vital to maximize their efficiency. The same problem arises when we attempt to maximize the efficiency…
Thermalization processes degrade the states of any working medium, turning any initial state into a passive state from which no work can be extracted. Recently, it has been shown that this degradation can be avoided if two identical…
According to the second law of thermodynamics, for every transformation performed on a system which is in contact with an environment of fixed temperature, the extracted work is bounded by the decrease of the free energy of the system.…
We discuss work performed on a quantum two-level system coupled to multiple thermal baths. To evaluate the work, a measurement of photon exchange between the system and the baths is envisioned. In a realistic scenario, some photons remain…
We study the performance of a quantum Otto heat engine with two spins coupled by a Heisenberg interaction, taking into account not only the mean values of work and efficiency but also their fluctuations. We first show that, for this system,…
In the context of fluctuation relations, we study the distribution of energy dissipated by a driven two-level system. Incorporating an energy counting field into the well known spin-boson model enables us to calculate the distribution…
We numerically simulate a thermalization process in an energy landscape with hierarchically organized metastable states. The initial configuration is chosen to have a large energy excess, relative to the thermal equilibrium value at the…
We investigate thermodynamics of general nonequilibrium processes stopped at stochastic times. We propose a systematic strategy for constructing fluctuation-theorem-like martingales for each thermodynamic functional, yielding a family of…
Standard results for the fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities are derived under the assumption of sampling identical systems that are in different, not fully equilibrated states. These results apply to fluctuations with time in a…
Thermodynamics is traditionally concerned with systems comprised of a large number of particles. Here we present a framework for extending thermodynamics to individual quantum systems, including explicitly a thermal bath and work-storage…
We experimentally study the fluctuations of the work done by an external Gaussian random force on two different stochastic systems coupled to a thermal bath: a colloidal particle in an optical trap and an atomic force microscopy cantilever.…
The fluctuation-dissipation relation for the classical definition of work is extended to thermally isolated systems, in classical and quantum realms. From this, the optimal work variance is calculated, showing it achieves its minimum…
Returning a system to a desired state under a force field involves a thermodynamic cost, i.e., {\it work}. This cost fluctuates for a small-scale system from one experimental realization to another. We introduce a general framework to…
We develop non-equilibrium theory by using averages in time and space as a generalized way to upscale thermodynamics in non-ergodic systems. The approach offers a classical perspective on the energy dynamics in fluctuating systems. The rate…
We calculate the fluctuation of the energy of a system in Tsallis statistics following the finite heat bath canonical ensemble approach. We obtain this fluctuation as the second derivative of the logarithm of the partition function plus an…
Molecular motors are known to have the high efficiency of energy transformation in the presence of thermal fluctuation. Motivated by the surprising fact, recent studies of thermal ratchet models are showing how and when work should be…
For a two-level quantum mechanical system, we derive microscopically the exact expression for the fluctuation of microscopic work in a multi-step non-equilibrium process, and we rigorously prove that in an isothermal process, the…
Fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities become non-negligible and play an important role when the system size is small. We develop finite-time thermodynamics of fluctuations in microscopic heat engines whose environmental temperature and…
Work fluctuation and total entropy production play crucial roles in small thermodynamic systems subject to large thermal fluctuations. We investigate a trade-off relation between them in a nonequilibrium situation in which a system starts…
In a stochastic heat engine driven by a cyclic non-equilibrium protocol, fluctuations in work and heat give rise to a fluctuating efficiency. Using computer simulations and tools from large deviation theory, we have examined these…