Related papers: Maximum power Stirling-like heat engine with a har…
The triumph of heat engines is their ability to convert the disordered energy of thermal sources into useful mechanical motion. In recent years, much effort has been devoted to generalizing thermodynamic notions to the quantum regime,…
We introduce a class of stochastic engines in which the regime of units operating synchronously can boost the performance. Our approach encompasses a minimal setup composed of $N$ interacting units placed in contact with two thermal baths…
We consider the problem of finding the energy minimum of a complex quantum Hamiltonian by employing a non-Markovian bath prepared in a low energy state. The energy minimization problem is thus turned into a thermodynamic cooling protocol in…
The piston system (particles in a box) is the simplest and paradigmatic model in traditional thermodynamics. However, the recently established framework of stochastic thermodynamics (ST) fails to apply to this model system due to the…
Gradients in temperature and particle concentration fuel many processes in the physical and biological world. In the present work we study a thermodynamic engine powered by anisotropic thermal excitation (that may be due to e.g., 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…
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…
Low-temperature-differential (LTD) Stirling heat engines are able to operate with a small temperature difference between low-temperature heat reservoirs that exist in our daily lives, and thus they are considered to be an important…
We study the maximum efficiency of a Carnot cycle heat engine based on a small system. It is revealed that due to the finiteness of the system, irreversibility may arise when the working substance contacts with a heat bath. As a result,…
We provide a consistent thermodynamic analysis of stochastic thermal engines driven by finite-size reservoirs, which are in turn coupled to infinite-size reservoirs. We consider a cyclic operation mode, where the working medium couples…
We demonstrate that the system composed of a gyrotropic particle out of thermal equilibrium with vacuum can be regarded as a heat engine. Such a particle, initially at rest, will experience a fluctuation-induced torque and start to rotate,…
We study the optimal performance of an information engine consisting of an overdamped Brownian bead confined in a controllable, $d$-dimensional harmonic trap and additionally subjected to gravity. The trap's center is updated dynamically…
In systems possessing a spatial or dynamical symmetry breaking thermal Brownian motion combined with unbiased, non-equilibrium noise gives rise to a channelling of chance that can be used to exercise control over systems at the micro- and…
We have studied the single particle heat engine and refrigerator driven by time asymmetric protocol of finite duration. Our system consists of a particle in a harmonic trap with time-periodic strength that drives the particle cyclically…
Heat engines extract work by running cyclically between two heat reservoirs. When the two reservoirs are thermal and at different temperatures, the maximum efficiency of the engine is given by the Carnot limit. Here we consider a quantum…
The autonomous heat engine is a model system of autonomous nonequilibrium systems like biological cells, exploiting nonequilibrium flow for operations. As the Carnot engine has essentially contributed to the equilibrium thermodynamics,…
The reversible nature of thermodynamical cycles is an idealisation based on the assumption of perfect quasi-static dynamics. As a consequence of this assumption, ideal engines operate at the maximum efficiency but have zero power. Realistic…
We study the performance of quantum thermal machines in which the working fluid of the model is represented by a many-body quantum system that is periodically connected with external baths via local couplings. A formal characterization of…
We study a quantum Stirling cycle which extracts work using quantized energy levels of a potential well. The work and the efficiency of the engine depend on the length of the potential well, and the Carnot efficiency is approached in a low…
In order to study further the promising free piston Stirling engine architecture, there is a need of an analytical thermodynamic model which could be used in a dynamical analysis for preliminary design. To aim at more realistic values, the…