Related papers: Nano-mirror induced three-level quantum heat engin…

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…

We describe how electromagnetically induced transparency may be used to construct a non-traditional near-ideal quantum heat engine as constrained by the Second Law. The engine is pumped by a thermal reservoir that may be either hotter or…

We identify the operational conditions for maximum power of a nanothermoelectric engine consisting of a single quantum level embedded between two leads at different temperatures and chemical potentials. The corresponding thermodynamic…

We study how much the efficiency of a solar cell as a quantum heat engine could be enhanced by quantum coherence. In contrast to the conventional approach that a quantum heat engine is in thermal equilibrium with both hot and cold…

Photosynthesis has been a long-standing research interest due to its fundamental importance. Recently, studies on photosynthesis processes also have inspired attention from a thermodynamical aspect when considering photosynthetic…

We investigate the quantum thermodynamics of two quantum systems, a two-level system and a four-level quantum photocell, each driven by photon pulses as a quantum heat engine. We set these systems to be in thermal contact only with a cold…

We propose a nanoscale heat engine that utilizes the physics of resonant tunneling in quantum dots in order to transfer electrons only at specific energies. The nanoengine converts heat into electrical current in a multiterminal geometry…

It is possible to extract work from a quantum-mechanical system whose dynamics is governed by a time-dependent cyclic Hamiltonian. An energy bath is required to operate such a quantum engine in place of the heat bath used to run a…

The minimal-coupling quantum heat engine is a thermal machine consisting of an explicit energy storage system, heat baths, and a working body, which alternatively couples to subsystems through discrete strokes -- energy-conserving two-body…

Charge and heat transport in nano-structures is dominated by non-equilibrium effects which strongly influence their behaviour. These effects are studied in a setup consisting of three external leads, one of which is considered as a heat…

Optical pump-probe signals can be viewed as work done by the matter while transferring the energy between two coherent baths (from pump to probe). In thermodynamics a heat engine, such as laser, is a device which performs similar work but…

In the past, a number of heat engine models have been devised to apply the principles of thermodynamics to a laser. The best one known is the model using a negative temperature to describe population inversion. In this paper, we present a…

We present a methodology to simulate the quantum thermodynamics of thermal machines which are built from an interacting working medium in contact with fermionic reservoirs at fixed temperature and chemical potential. Our method works at…

We study the impact of cooperative many-body effects on the operation of periodically-driven quantum thermal machines, particularly heat engines and refrigerators. In suitable geometries, $N$ two-level atoms can exchange energy with the…

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…

We study the unitary time evolution of a simple quantum Hamiltonian describing a heat engine coupled to two heat baths. The engine is modeled as a three-level system. Each heat bath consists of a single harmonic oscillator. The engine is…

An autonomous quantum thermal machine comprising a trapped atom or ion placed inside an optical cavity is proposed and analysed. Such a machine can operate as a heat engine whose working medium is the quantised atomic motion, or as an…

A heat engine is a machine which uses the temperature difference between a hot and a cold reservoir to extract work. Here both reservoirs are quantum systems and a heat engine is described by a unitary transformation which decreases the…

Established heat engines in quantum regime can be modeled with various quantum systems as working substances. For example, in the non-relativistic case, we can model the heat engine using infinite potential well as a working substance to…

The question of whether quantum coherence is a resource beneficial or detrimental to the performance of quantum heat engines has been thoroughly studied but remains undecided. To isolate the contribution of coherence, we analyze the…