Related papers: Quantum thermal machine as a rectifier

We investigate the thermal responses of a harmonic oscillator chain coupled at its boundaries to heat baths held at different temperatures. This setup sustains a steady energy flux, continuously dissipating heat into both reservoirs. By…

We consider a discrete quantum system coupled to a finite bath, which may consist of only one particle, in contrast to the standard baths which usually consist of continua of oscillators, spins, etc. We find that such finite baths may…

We present a general unified approach for the study of quantum thermal machines, including both heat engines and refrigerators, operating under periodic adiabatic driving and in contact with thermal reservoirs kept at different…

It is common knowledge that coupling to a heat bath, in general, tends to reduce the entanglement in a quantum system. In recent years, increasing interest has been devoted to the opposite situation where thermal or specifically tailored…

We analytically identify sufficient conditions for manifesting thermal rectification in two-terminal hybrid structures within the quantum master equation formalism. We recognize two classes of rectifiers. In type A rectifiers the contacts…

The thermodynamic uncertainty relation, originally derived for classical Markov-jump processes, provides a trade-off relation between precision and dissipation, deepening our understanding of the performance of quantum thermal machines.…

The well-known increase of the decoherence rate with the temperature, for a quantum system coupled to a linear thermal bath, holds no longer for a different bath dynamics. This is shown by means of a simple classical non-linear bath, as…

Entropy production is a fundamental concept in nonequilibrium thermodynamics, providing a direct measure of the irreversibility inherent in any physical process. In this work, we investigate in steady-state the enhancement of…

We consider a quantum system in contact with a heat bath consisting in an infinite chain of identical sub-systems at thermal equilibrium at inverse temperature $\beta$. The time evolution is discrete and such that over each time step of…

We discuss a qubit weakly coupled to a finite-size heat bath (calorimeter) from the point of view of quantum thermodynamics. The energy deposited to this environment together with the state of the qubit provides a basis to analyze the heat…

Uncovering whether strong system-bath coupling can be an advantageous operation resource for energy conversion can facilitate the development of efficient quantum heat engines (QHEs). Yet, a consensus on this ongoing debate is still lacking…

Environments in quantum thermodynamics usually take the role of heat baths. These baths are Markovian, weakly coupled to the system, and initialized in a thermal state. Whenever one of these properties is missing, standard quantum…

We derive rigorous quantum mechanical bounds for the heat current through a nanojunction connecting two thermal baths at different temperatures. Based on exact sum rules, these bounds compliment the well-known quantum of thermal conductance…

We consider the effect of a thermal bath on quantum correlations induced by the gravitational interaction in the weak field limit between two massive cat states, called gravitational cat (gravcat) states. The main goal of this paper is to…

Autonomous entanglement engines have recently been proposed to generate steady-state bipartite and multipartite entanglement exploiting only incoherent interactions with thermal baths at different temperatures. In this work, we investigate…

Heat rectifiers would facilitate energy management operations such as cooling, or energy harvesting, but devices of practical interest are still missing. Understanding heat rectification at a fundamental level is key to help us find or…

Conventional continuous quantum heat engines with incoherent heat transfer perform poorly as they exploit two-body interactions between the system and hot or cold baths, thus having limited capability to outperform their classical…

It is illustrated that semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) embedded into an insulating matrix connected with metallic electrodes and some vacuum space can lead to significant thermal rectification effect. A multilevel Anderson model is used to…

Making use of the master equation and effective Hamiltonian approach, we investigate the steady state entanglement in a three-qubit $XX$ model. Both symmetric and nonsymmetric qubit-qubit couplings are considered. The system (the three…

Thermal machines exploit interactions with multiple heat baths to perform useful tasks, such as work production and refrigeration. In the quantum regime, tasks with no classical counterpart become possible. Here, we consider the minimal…