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We perform an extensive analysis of passive as well as active micro-heat engines with different single-particle stochastic models. Using stochastic thermodynamics we calculate thermodynamic work, heat, entropy production and efficiency of…
Heat engines that convert thermal energy into work are a cornerstone of classical thermodynamics and remain an active area of contemporary research. Notable examples include microscopic heat engines, trade-off relations between power and…
We investigate the thermodynamics and fluctuations of a finite-time quantum Otto engine alternatively driven by a hot squeezed and a cold thermal reservoir. We show that reservoir squeezing significantly enhances the performance by…
In the quest for high-performance quantum thermal machines, looking for an optimal thermodynamic efficiency is only part of the issue. Indeed, at the level of quantum devices, fluctuations become extremely relevant and need to be taken into…
Recent predictions for quantum-mechanical enhancements in the operation of small heat engines have raised renewed interest in their study from both a fundamental perspective and in view of applications. One essential question is whether…
In Szilard's engine, measurement and feedback allows to extract work from an equilibrium environment, a process otherwise forbidden by the laws of thermodynamics. Recent theoretical developments have established fluctuation theorems and…
Thermodynamics of nanoscale devices is an active area of research. Despite their noisy surrounding they often produce mechanical work (e.g. micro-heat engines), display rectified Brownian motion (e.g. molecular motors). This invokes…
We study the optimization of the performance of arbitrary periodically driven thermal machines. Within the assumption of fast modulation of the driving parameters, we derive the optimal cycle that universally maximizes the extracted power…
Recent works on the concatenation of two simple heat engines have shown that it may lead to non-monotonic variations in the efficiency and power with parameters like driving amplitudes and asymmetries in cycle periods. Motivated by this…
Periodic driving is used to operate machines that go from standard macroscopic engines to small non-equilibrium micro-sized systems. Two classes of such systems are small heat engines driven by periodic temperature variations and molecular…
We examine a quantum heat engine with an interacting many-body working medium consisting of the long-range Kitaev chain to explore the role of long-range interactions in the performance of the quantum engine. By analytically studying two…
We optimize finite-time stochastic heat engines with a periodically scaled Hamiltonian under experimentally motivated constraints on the bath temperature $T$ and the scaling parameter $\lambda$. We present a general geometric proof that…
Optimisation of heat engines at the micro-scale has applications in biological and artificial nano-technology, and stimulates theoretical research in non-equilibrium statistical physics. Here we consider non-interacting overdamped particles…
We present a self contained formalism modelled after the Brownian motion of a quantum harmonic oscillator for describing the performance of microscopic Brownian heat engines like Carnot, Stirling and Otto engines. Our theory, besides…
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…
Real quantum heat engines lack the separation of time and length scales that is characteristic for classical engines. They must be understood as open quantum systems in non-equilibrium with time-controlled coupling to thermal reservoirs as…
The optimization of finite-time thermodynamic heat engines was intensively explored recently, yet limited to few cycles, e.g. finite-time Carnot-like cycle. In this paper, we supplement a new type of finite-time engine with quantum Otto…
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…
We investigate the energetic advantage of accelerating a quantum harmonic oscillator Otto engine by use of shortcuts to adiabaticity (for the expansion and compression strokes) and to equilibrium (for the hot isochore), by means of…
We explore the thermodynamics of stochastic heat engines in presence of stochastic resetting. The set-up comprises an engine whose working substance is a Brownian particle undergoing overdamped Langevin dynamics in a harmonic potential with…