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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…
For finite-time quantum Otto heat engine with working fluid consisting of either a (i) qubit or (ii) a harmonic oscillator, we show that the relative fluctuation of output work is always greater than the corresponding relative fluctuation…
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…
The second law of thermodynamics constrains that the efficiency of heat engines, classical or quantum, cannot be greater than the universal Carnot efficiency. We discover another bound for the efficiency of a quantum Otto heat engine…
We propose a quantum Otto cycle based on the properties of a two-level system in a realistic out-of-thermal-equilibrium electromagnetic field acting as its sole reservoir. This steady configuration is produced without the need of active…
We analyze the role of virtual temperatures for passive quantum states through the lens of majorization theory. A mean temperature over the virtual temperatures of adjacent energy levels is defined to compare the passive states of the…
We study a quantum heat engine at strong coupling between the system and the thermal reservoirs. Exploiting a collective coordinate mapping, we incorporate system-reservoir correlations into a consistent thermodynamic analysis, thus…
We consider the efficiency at maximum power of a quantum Otto engine, which uses a spin or a harmonic system as its working substance and works between two heat reservoirs at constant temperatures $T_h$ and $T_c$ $ (<T_h)$. Although the…
Recent advances in applying thermodynamic ideas to quantum systems have raised the novel prospect of using non-thermal, non-classical sources of energy, of purely quantum origin, like quantum statistics, to extract mechanical work in…
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,…
It was reported that, if and only if the specific heat, correlation length, and dynamical exponents $\alpha, \nu$ and $z$, fulfill the condition $\alpha-z\nu>0$, the phase transitions can enable a quantum heat engine to approach Carnot…
The performance of quantum heat engines is generally based on the analysis of a single cycle. We challenge this approach by showing that the total work performed by a quantum engine need not be proportional to the number of cycles.…
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…
From the thermodynamic equilibrium properties of a two-level system with variable energy-level gap $\Delta$, and a careful distinction between the Gibbs relation $dE = T dS + (E/\Delta) d\Delta$ and the energy balance equation $dE = \delta…
We investigate heat engines whose working substance is made of two coupled qubits performing a generalised Otto cycle by varying their applied magnetic field or their interaction strength during the compression and expansion strokes. During…
Relativistic quantum systems exhibit unique features not present at lower energies, such as the existence of both particles and antiparticles, and restrictions placed on the system dynamics due to the light cone. In order to understand what…
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…
While the emergent field of quantum thermodynamics has the potential to impact energy science, the performance of thermal machines is often classical. We ask whether quantum effects can boost the performance of a thermal machine to reach…
We consider a quantum Otto cycle with an interacting Bose-Einstein condensate at finite temperature. We present a procedure to evolve this system in time in three spatial dimensions, in which closed (adiabatic) strokes are described by the…
We apply advanced methods of control theory to open quantum systems and we determine finite-time processes which are optimal with respect to thermodynamic performances. General properties and necessary conditions characterizing optimal…