Related papers: Nonlinear refrigerator with a finite-sized cold he…
We study the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of a heat engine operating between two finite-sized reservoirs with well-defined temperatures. Within the linear response regime, it is found that the uniform temperature of the two reservoirs at…
We study a process of heat transfer between a body of heat capacity C(T) and a sequence of N heat reservoirs, with temperatures equally spaced between an initial temperature T_0 and a final temperature T_N. The body and the heat reservoirs…
Although classical thermal machines power industries and modern living, quantum thermal engines have yet to prove their utility. Here, we demonstrate a useful quantum absorption refrigerator formed from superconducting circuits. We use it…
The concepts of weighted reciprocal of temperature and weighted thermal flux are proposed for a heat engine operating between two heat baths and outputting mechanical work. With the aid of these two concepts, the generalized thermodynamic…
A heat exchanger can be modeled as a closed domain containing an incompressible fluid. The moving fluid has a temperature distribution obeying the advection-diffusion equation, with zero temperature boundary conditions at the walls.…
We analyze the performance of a quantum Otto cycle, employing time-dependent harmonic oscillator as the working fluid undergoing sudden expansion and compression strokes during the adiabatic stages, coupled to a squeezed reservoir. First,…
Recent laboratory experiments suggest an intrinsic asymmetry between heating and cooling, with heating occurring more efficiently. Two decades earlier, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations had examined a related setup - heating one side of a…
We show that one can construct a quantum absorption refrigerator that provides refrigeration only in the transient regime, by using three interacting qubits, each of which is also interacting with local heat-bath. The machine either does…
We consider a system formed by two different segments of particles, coupled to thermal baths, one at each end, modeled by Langevin thermostats. The particles in each segment interact harmonically and are subject to an on-site potential, for…
We present a study of the performance of endoreversible thermal machines optimized with respect to the thermodynamic force associated with the cold bath in the regime of small thermodynamic forces. These thermal machines can work either as…
Controlling heat flow at the quantum level is essential for the development of next-generation thermal devices. We investigate thermal rectification in a quantum harmonic oscillator coupled to two thermal baths via both single-photon…
The quantum dynamics of a two-level system coupled to an Ohmic spin- bath is studied by means of the perturbation approach based on a unitary transformation. A scattering function $\xi_k$ is introduced in the transformation to take into…
Temperature of a finite-sized system fluctuates due to the thermal fluctuations. However, a systematic mathematical framework for measuring or estimating the temperature is still underdeveloped. Here, we incorporate the estimation theory in…
We study the coefficient of performance (COP) and its bounds of the Canot-like refrigerator working between two heat reservoirs at constant temperatures $T_h$ and $T_c$, under two optimization criteria $\chi$ and $\Omega$. In view of the…
We consider a situation where an $N$-level system (NLS) is coupled successively to two heat baths with different temperatures without being necessarily thermalized and approaches a steady state. For this situation we apply a general…
We present the design for a thermodynamic computer that can perform arbitrary nonlinear calculations in or out of equilibrium. Simple thermodynamic circuits, fluctuating degrees of freedom in contact with a thermal bath and confined by a…
We investigate non-equilibrium transport of charge and heat through an interacting quantum dot coupled to a finite electron reservoir. Both the quantum dot and the finite reservoir are coupled to conventional electric contacts, i.e.,…
We investigate a mesoscopic refrigerator based on chiral quantum Hall edge channels. We discuss a three-terminal cooling device in which charge transport occurs between a pair of voltage-biased terminals only. The third terminal, which is…
The wave-like nature of electrons leads to the existence of upper bounds on the thermoelectric response of nanostructured devices [R. S. Whitney, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 130601 (2014); Phys. Rev. B 91, 115425 (2015)]. This fundamental result,…
Improvement of thermoelectric systems in terms of performance and range of applications relies on progress in materials science and optimization of device operation. In this chapter, we focuse on optimization by taking into account the…