Related papers: Squeezing light to get nonclassical work in quantu…
We present a mechanism for efficiency increase in quantum heat engines containing internal energy levels that do not couple to the external work sink. The gain is achieved by using these levels to channel heat in a direction opposite to the…
Constraints on work extraction are fundamental to our operational understanding of the thermodynamics of both classical and quantum systems. In the quantum setting, finite-time control operations typically generate coherence in the…
Thermodynamics is a branch of science blessed by an unparalleled combination of generality of scope and formal simplicity. Based on few natural assumptions together with the four laws, it sets the boundaries between possible and impossible…
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,…
Recent evidence suggests that quantum effects may have functional importance in biological light-harvesting systems. Along with delocalized electronic excitations, it is now suspected that quantum coherent interactions with certain…
With the progress of nano-technology, thermodynamics also has to be scaled down, calling for specific protocols to extract and measure work. Usually, such protocols involve the action of an external, classical field (the battery) of…
Squeezed states of light constitute an important nonclassical resource in the field of high-precision measurements, e.g. gravitational wave detection, as well as in the field of quantum information, e.g. for teleportation, quantum…
Quantum information-processing techniques enable work extraction from a system's inherently quantum features, in addition to the classical free energy it contains. Meanwhile, the science of computational mechanics affords tools for the…
There are both practical and foundational motivations to consider the thermodynamics of quantum systems at small scales. Here we address the issue of autonomous quantum thermal machines that are tailored to achieve some specific…
Laser cooling is a fundamental technique used in primary atomic frequency standards, quantum computers, quantum condensed matter physics and tests of fundamental physics, among other areas. It has been known since the early 1990s that laser…
We investigate the prospect of enhancing the phase sensitivity of atom interferometers in the Mach-Zehnder configuration with squeezed light. Ultimately, this enhancement is achieved by transferring the quantum state of squeezed light to…
We investigate the creation of squeezed states of a vibrating membrane or a movable mirror in an opto-mechanical system. An optical cavity is driven by squeezed light and couples via radiation pressure to the membrane/mirror, effectively…
We show that frequent nondemolition measurements of a quantum system immersed in a thermal bath allow the extraction of work in a closed cycle from the system-bath interaction (correlation) energy, a hitherto unexploited work resource. It…
The heat engine, a machine that extracts useful work from thermal sources, is one of the basic theoretical constructs and fundamental applications of classical thermodynamics. The classical description of a heat engine does not include…
Entangled many body systems have recently attracted significant attention in various contexts. Among them, spin squeezed atoms and ions have raised interest in the field of precision measurements, as they allow to overcome quantum noise of…
Besides their stunning physical properties which are unmatched in a classical world, squeezed states of electromagnetic radiation bear advanced application potentials in quantum information systems and precision metrology, including…
Under a general framework, shortcuts to adiabatic processes are shown to be possible in classical systems. We then study the distribution function of the work done on a small system initially prepared at thermal equilibrium. It is found…
The concept of inner friction, by which a quantum heat engine is unable to follow adiabatically its strokes and thus dissipates useful energy, is illustrated in an exact physical model where the working substance consists of an ensemble of…
This article presents a squeezing transformation for quantum systems associated to finite vector spaces. The physical idea of squeezing here is taken from the action of the usual squeezing operator over wave functions defined on a real…
We consider an ensemble of trapped atoms interacting with a continuous wave laser field. For sufficiently polarized atoms and for a polarized light field, we may approximate the non-classical components of the collective spin angular…