Related papers: The problem of engines in statistical physics
The theory of quantum thermodynamics investigates how the concepts of heat, work, and temperature can be carried over to the quantum realm, where fluctuations and randomness are fundamentally unavoidable. Of particular practical relevance…
Recently, a formal analogy between the fluctuating diffusivity and thermodynamics has been proposed based on phenomena of heterogeneous diffusion observed in living cells. This not only offers the analogs of the quantity of heat and work as…
Thermal machines are physical systems designed to convert thermal energy into practical work through cyclic state transformations. A key component in such a machine is a clock-equipped control element that dictates which interaction…
Originally formulated for macroscopic machines, the laws of thermodynamics were recently shown to hold for quantum systems coupled to ideal sources of work (external classical fields) and heat (systems at equilibrium). Ongoing efforts have…
We investigate a model of a stochastic engine operating cyclically at constant bath temperature, which consists of an overdamped Brownian harmonic oscillator that plays the role of working substance and is elastically coupled to an active…
This paper is a preliminary work to address the problem of dynamical systems with parameters varying in time. An idea to predict their behaviour is proposed. These systems are called \emph{transient systems}, and are distinguished from…
One of the fundamental questions in quantum thermodynamics concerns the decomposition of energetic changes into heat and work. Contrary to classical engines, the entropy change of the piston cannot be neglected in the quantum domain. As a…
Energy exchanges under form of heat is neither the most natural or efficient way to operate an engine in the quantum realm. Recently there have been in the literature several proposals for "quantum measurement engines" where energy is fed…
The basic notions of statistical mechanics (microstates, multiplicities) are quite simple, but understanding how the second law arises from these ideas requires working with cumbersomely large numbers. To avoid getting bogged down in…
We argue that statistical mechanics of systems with relaxation implies breaking the energy function of systems into two having different transformation rules. With this duality the energy approach incorporates the generalized vortex forces.…
We study the role of quantum statistics in the performance of Otto cycles. First, we show analytically that the work distributions for bosonic and fermionic working fluids are identical for cycles driven by harmonic trapping potentials.…
We investigate a microscopic motor based on an externally controlled two-level system. One cycle of the motor operation consists of two strokes. Within each stroke, the two-level system is in contact with a given thermal bath and its energy…
Giving a universal upper bound on the power output of heat engines is a long-standing open problem. We tackle this problem for generic quantum machines in self-contained formulation by carefully including the switching process of the…
Quantum many-body systems out of equilibrium can host intriguing phenomena such as transitions to exotic dynamical states. Although this emergent behaviour can be observed in experiments, its potential for technological applications is…
In recent years statistical physicists have developed {\it discrete} "particle-hopping" models of vehicular traffic, usually formulated in terms of {\it cellular automata}, which are similar to the microscopic models of interacting charged…
Statistical mechanics is one of the most comprehensive theories in physics. From a boiling pot of water to the complex dynamics of quantum many-body systems it provides a successful connection between the microscopic dynamics of atoms and…
The reversible nature of thermodynamical cycles is an idealisation based on the assumption of perfect quasi-static dynamics. As a consequence of this assumption, ideal engines operate at the maximum efficiency but have zero power. Realistic…
The association of information with entropy has been argued on plausibility arguments involving the operation of imaginary engines and beings, and it is not a universal theorem. In this paper, a theorem by Charles Bennett on reversible…
Active matter constantly dissipates energy to power the self-propulsion of its microscopic constituents. This opens the door to designing innovative cyclic engines without any equilibrium equivalent. We offer a consistent thermodynamic…
Thermal engines have been one of the principal topics of thermodynamics ever since its beginning. Today, in the era of the second quantum revolution, although the thermal processes in constant temperatures are relatively well understood in…