Related papers: Two and three-state quantum heat engines with stoc…
Unlike classical systems, a measurement performed on a quantum system always alters its state. In this work, the impacts of two diagnostic schemes to determine the performance of quantum Otto heat engines are compared: In one scheme, the…
Quantum thermodynamics studies quantum effects in thermal machines. But when is a heat engine, which cyclically interacts with external reservoirs that unavoidably destroy its quantum coherence, really quantum? We here use the Leggett-Garg…
The work provides an overview on some recent advances in the area of quantum thermodynamics and quantum heat engines. A particular emphasis is put on the possibility of constructing finite time quantum cycles and adiabatic shortcuts. We…
Molecular dynamics simulations are widely used across chemistry, physics, and biology, providing quantitative insight into complex processes with atomic detail. However, their limited timescale of a few microseconds is a significant…
The difference between quantum isoenergetic process and quantum isothermal process comes from the violation of the law of equipartition of energy in the quantum regime. To reveal an important physical meaning of this fact, here we study a…
The laws of thermodynamics strongly restrict the performance of thermal machines. Standard thermodynamics, initially developed for uncorrelated macroscopic systems, does not hold for microscopic systems correlated with their environments.…
Navigating the intricacies of thermal management at the quantum scale is a challenge in the pursuit of advanced nanoscale technologies. To this extent, theoretical frameworks introducing minimal models mirroring the functionality of…
The Carnot statement of the second law of thermodynamics poses an upper limit on the efficiency of all heat engines. Recently, it has been studied whether generic quantum features such as coherence and quantum entanglement could allow for…
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.…
Non-equilibrium effects may have a profound impact on the performance of thermal devices performing thermodynamic tasks such as refrigeration or heat pumping. The possibility of enhancing the performance of thermodynamic operations by means…
The unavoidable irreversible losses of power in a heat engine are found to be of quantum origin. Following thermodynamic tradition a model quantum heat engine operating by the Otto cycle is analyzed. The working medium of the model is…
Heat engines near the adiabatic limit typically assume a working medium at thermal equilibrium. However, quantum many-body systems often showcase conservation laws that hinder thermalization, leading to prethermalization in exotic…
Stochastic resetting, where a dynamical process is intermittently returned to a fixed reference state, has emerged as a powerful mechanism for optimizing first-passage properties. Existing theory largely treats static, non-learning…
We show a quantum boost in the output power of a heat engine formed by a two-level system coupled to a single-mode cavity. The key ingredient here is the nonstationary regime achieved when some system parameter (atomic transition frequency,…
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…
Energy exchanges under form of heat is neither the most natural or efficient way to operate an engine in the quantum realm. Recently there have been in the literature several proposals for "quantum measurement engines" where energy is fed…
Towers of quantum many-body scars are sets of highly-excited eigenstates of nonintegrable Hamiltonians whose dynamics shows athermal behavior and persistent oscillations in time. The preparation of such states is, however, challenging due…
We consider an ensemble of indistinguishable quantum machines and show that quantum statistical effects can give rise to a genuine quantum enhancement of the collective thermodynamic performance. When multiple indistinguishable bosonic work…
Stochastic heat engines are devices that generate work from random thermal motion using a small number of highly fluctuating degrees of freedom. Proposals for such devices have existed for more than a century and include the Maxwell demon…
A simple model of the two-state ratchet type is proposed for molecular chemical engines that convert chemical free energy into mechanical work and vice versa. The engine works by catalyzing a chemical reaction and turning a rotor.…