Related papers: Proposal for an autonomous quantum heat engine
The efficiency of a quantum heat engine is maximum when the unitary strokes are adiabatic. On the other hand, this may not be always possible due to small energy gaps in the system, especially at the critical point where the gap vanishes.…
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…
We analyse a quantum Otto refrigerator based on a superconducting qubit coupled to two LC-resonators each including a resistor acting as a reservoir. We find various operation regimes: nearly adiabatic (low driving frequency), ideal Otto…
We investigate a quantum heat engine with a working substance of two particles, one with a spin $1/2$ and the other with an arbitrary spin (spin $s$), coupled by Heisenberg exchange interaction, and subject to an external magnetic field.…
In this paper, we analyze the operation of an Otto cycle heat machine driven by a non-interacting two-dimensional electron gas on a twisted geometry. We show that due to both the energy quantization on this structure and the adiabatic…
We review recent theoretical work on thermoelectric energy harvesting in multi-terminal quantum-dot setups. We first discuss several examples of nanoscale heat engines based on Coulomb-coupled conductors. In particular, we focus on quantum…
A quantum two-level system with periodically modulated energy splitting could provide a minimal universal quantum heat machine. We present the experimental realization and the theoretical description of such a two-level system as an…
Differences between the thermodynamic behavior of the three-level amplifier (a quantum heat engine based on a thermally pumped laser) and the classical Carnot cycle are usually attributed to the essentially quantum or discrete nature of the…
The possibility of efficiently converting heat into work at the microscale has triggered an intense research effort to understand quantum heat engines, driven by the hope of quantum superiority over classical counterparts. In this work, we…
Continuous particle exchange thermal machines require no time-dependent driving, can be realised in solid-state electronic devices, and miniaturised to nanometre scale. Quantum dots, providing a narrow energy filter and allowing to…
A cyclically working quantum mechanical engine that operates at a single temperature is proposed. Its energy input is delivered by a quantum measurement. The functioning of the engine does not require any feedback control. We analyze work,…
Time-dependent driving of quantum systems has emerged as a powerful tool to engineer exotic phases far from thermal equilibrium, but in the presence of many-body interactions it also leads to runaway heating, so that generic systems are…
We develop a geometric framework to describe the thermodynamics of microscopic heat engines driven by slow periodic temperature variations and modulations of a mechanical control parameter. Covering both the classical and the quantum…
Following the result by Skrzypczyk et al., arXiv:1009.0865, that certain self-contained quantum thermal machines can reach Carnot efficiency, we discuss the functioning of self-contained quantum thermal machines and show, in a very general…
After a brief historical perspective, we introduce the key notions of work and heat for quantum systems, to then apply them to quantum engines operating on quantum Otto and Carnot cycles. The irreversible and dissipative character of the…
We study a quantum heat engine at strong coupling between the system and the thermal reservoirs. Exploiting a collective coordinate mapping, we incorporate system-reservoir correlations into a consistent thermodynamic analysis, thus…
Optimisation of heat engines at the micro-scale has applications in biological and artificial nano-technology, and stimulates theoretical research in non-equilibrium statistical physics. Here we consider non-interacting overdamped particles…
The emerging quantum technological apparatuses [1,2], such as the quantum computer [3-5], call for extreme performance in thermal engineering at the nanoscale [6]. Importantly, quantum mechanics sets a fundamental upper limit for the flow…
We explore the dependence of the performance bounds of heat engines and refrigerators on the initial quantum state and the subsequent evolution of their piston, modeled by a quantized harmonic oscillator. Our goal is to provide a fully…
Superconducting microwave circuits form a versatile platform for storing and manipulating quantum information. A major challenge to further scalability is to find approaches for connecting these systems over long distances and at high…