Related papers: Power-Efficiency Constraint for Chemical Motors
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 investigate the efficiency of systems of molecular motors operating at maximum power. We consider two models of kinesin motors on a microtubule: for both the simplified and the detailed model, we find that the many-body exclusion effect…
We derive the statistics of the efficiency under the assumption that thermodynamic fluxes fluctuate with normal law, parametrizing it in terms of time, macroscopic efficiency, and a coupling parameter $\zeta$. It has a peculiar behavior: No…
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…
Heat engines cannot generally operate at maximum power and efficiency, imposing a trade-off between the two. Here, we highlight the exact nature of this trade-off for engines that exchange heat radiatively with a hot source. We derive…
By converting energy into mechanical work, engines play a central role in most biological and technological processes. In particular, within the current trend towards the development of nanoscience and nanotechnology, microscopic engines…
Since its inception about two centuries ago thermodynamics has sparkled continuous interest and fundamental questions. According to the second law no heat engine can have an efficiency larger than Carnot's efficiency. The latter can be…
Emergence, optimization and stability of a motor-like motion in a fluctuating environment are analyzed. The emergence of motion is shown to be a general phenomenon. A motor converges to the state with the minimum of effective temperature…
Collisional Brownian engines have been proposed as alternatives for nonequilibrium nanoscale engines. However, most studies have focused on the simpler overdamped case, leaving the role of inertia much less explored. In this work, we…
According to Thermodynamics, the efficiency of a heat engine is upper bounded by Carnot efficiency. For macroscopic systems, the Carnot efficiency is, however, achieved only for quasi static processes. And, considerable attention has been…
This paper concludes a three-Part series on the limits the laws of physics place on the sustained performance of reversible computers. Part I concerned aggregate performance in terms of computational operations per unit time, but neglected…
A quantum-mechanical analog of the Carnot engine reversibly working at vanishing temperature, shortly termed the quantum-mechanical Carnot engine, is discussed. A general formula for the efficiency of such an engine with an arbitrary…
The generation of unidirectional motion has been a long-standing challenge in engineering of molecular motors and, more generally, machines. A molecular motor is characterized by a set of low energy states that differ in their…
We consider a class of quantum heat engines consisting of two subsystems interacting via a unitary transformation and coupled to two separate baths at different temperatures $T_h > T_c$. The purpose of the engine is to extract work due to…
We consider the efficiency of chemical energy extraction from the environment by the growth of a copolymer made of two constituent units in the entropy-driven regime. We show that the thermodynamic nonlinearity associated with the…
We analyze an autonomous micro-engine as a closed quantum mechanical system, including the work it performs and the fuel it consumes. Our model system shows by example that it is possible to transfer energy steadily and spontaneously…
An expression for the energetic efficiency of a molecular motor is presented in terms of an effective temperature, which was defined based on the ratio of the correlation function to the susceptibility of its velocity. We also present a…
The working substance fueling a quantum heat engine may contain coherence in its energy basis, depending on the dynamics of the engine cycle. In some models of quantum Otto heat engines, energy coherence has been associated with entropy…
We derive the general probability distribution function of stochastic work for quantum Otto engines in which both the isochoric and driving processes are irreversible due to finite time duration. The time-dependent power fluctuations,…
We propose a two-stage cycle for an optimized linear-irreversible heat engine that operates, in a finite time, between a hot (cold) reservoir and a finite auxiliary system acting as a sink (source) in the first (second) stage. Under the…