Related papers: Cyclic quantum engines enhanced by strong bath cou…
After a brief historical perspective, we introduce the key notions of work and heat for quantum systems, to then apply them to quantum engines operating on quantum Otto and Carnot cycles. The irreversible and dissipative character of the…
The finite-time operation of a quantum heat engine that uses a single particle as a working medium generally increases the output power at the expense of inducing friction that lowers the cycle efficiency. We propose to scale up a quantum…
Modern technologies could soon make it possible to investigate the operation cycles of quantum heat engines by counting the photons that are emitted and absorbed by their working systems. Using the quantum jump approach to open-system…
We propose a quantum heat engine based on a quadratically coupled optomechanical system. The optical component of the system is driven periodically with an incoherent thermal drive, which induces periodic oscillations in the mechanical…
We study how a quantum heat engine based on a single trapped ion performs in finite time. The always-on thermal environment acts like the hot bath, while the motional degree of freedom of the ion plays the role of the effective cold bath.…
Starting from the observation that the reduced state of a system strongly coupled to a bath is, in general, an athermal state, we introduce and study a cyclic battery-charger quantum device that is in thermal equilibrium, or in a ground…
We consider a paradigmatic quantum harmonic Otto engine operating in finite time. We investigate its performance when shortcut-to-adiabaticity techniques are used to speed up its cycle. We compute efficiency and power by taking the…
We study a quantum Otto engine embedding a working substance composed by a two-level system interacting with a harmonic mode. The physical properties of the substance are described by a generalized quantum Rabi model arising in…
We investigate the efficiency of a quantum Carnot engine based on open quantum dynamics theory. The model includes time-dependent external fields for the subsystems controlling the isothermal and isentropic processes and for the…
The thermodynamic framework of repeated interactions is generalized to an arbitrary open quantum system in contact with a heat bath. Based on these findings the theory is then extended to arbitrary measurements performed on the system. This…
Continuous particle exchange thermal machines require no time-dependent driving, can be realised in solid-state electronic devices, and miniaturised to nanometre scale. Quantum dots, providing a narrow energy filter and allowing to…
Quantum coherence has been shown to impact the operational capabilities of quantum systems performing thermodynamic tasks in a significant way, and yet the possibility and conditions for genuine coherence-enhanced thermodynamic operation…
We consider a finite-time quantum Otto cycle with single and two-spin-$1/2$ systems as its working medium. In order to mimic adiabatic dynamics at a finite-time, we employ a shortcut-to-adiabaticity technique and evaluate the performance of…
The unavoidable irreversible losses of power in a heat engine are found to be of quantum origin. Following thermodynamic tradition a model quantum heat engine operating by the Otto cycle is analyzed. The working medium of the model is…
The Carnot cycle is a prototype of ideal heat engine to draw mechanical energy from the heat flux between two thermal baths with the maximum efficiency, dubbed as the Carnot efficiency $\eta_{\mathrm{C}}$. Such efficiency can only be…
Many-body-localized (MBL) systems do not thermalize under their intrinsic dynamics. The athermality of MBL, we propose, can be harnessed for thermodynamic tasks. We illustrate this ability by formulating an Otto engine cycle for a quantum…
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 study the thermodynamic performance of the finite-time non-regenerative Stirling cycle used as a quantum heat engine. We consider specifically the case in which the working substance (WS) is a two-level system. The Stirling cycle is made…
Quantum heat transfer is analyzed in nonequilibrium two-qubits systems by applying the nonequilibrium polaron-transformed Redfield equation combined with full counting statistics. Steady state heat currents with weak and strong qubit-bath…
This paper revisits the classical problem of representing a thermal bath interacting with a system as a large collection of harmonic oscillators initially in thermal equilibrium. As is well known the system then obeys an equation, which in…