Related papers: Efficient heat-energy conversion from a non-therma…
Dynamics of integrable systems, such as Tomonaga-Luttinger (TL) liquids, is deterministic, and the absence of stochastic thermalization processes provides unique characteristics, such as long-lived non-thermal metastable states with many…
Conventional heat engines typically require two distinct thermal reservoirs, with their efficiency strictly bounded by the Carnot limit. We present a theoretical design for a phase-change heat engine that utilizes water as the working fluid…
A Tomonaga-Luttinger (TL) liquid is known as an integrable system, in which a non-equilibrium many-body state survives without relaxing to a thermalized state. This intriguing characteristic is tested experimentally in copropagating quantum…
A theoretical study of the thermoelectric current and energy harvesting in an interacting double quantum dot system, connected to reservoirs held at different chemical potentials and temperatures is presented. Using a rate-equation…
We provide a framework for optimizing energy conversion processes in coherent quantum conductors fed by nonthermal resources. Such nonthermal resources, which cannot be characterized by temperatures or electrochemical potentials, occur in…
We analyze a heat engine based on a hot cavity connected via quantum wells to electronic reservoirs. We discuss the output power as well as the efficiency both in the linear and nonlinear regime. We find that the device delivers a large…
Heat is a physical manifestation of entropy, where the removal of entropy from a thermal energy reservoir permits the conversion of heat into work. This entropy transfer is facilitated by the cold thermal energy reservoir in typical heat…
More than half of the waste heat rejected into the environment has temperatures lower than 100 $^\circ C$, which accounts for nearly 85 PWh/year worldwide. Efficiently harvesting low-grade heat could be a promising step toward carbon…
We analyze the power output of a quantum dot machine coupled to two electronic reservoirs via thermoelectric contacts, and to two thermal reservoirs - one hot and one cold. This machine is a nanoscale analogue of a conventional thermocouple…
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…
We propose a nanoscale heat engine that utilizes the physics of resonant tunneling in quantum dots in order to transfer electrons only at specific energies. The nanoengine converts heat into electrical current in a multiterminal geometry…
Energy harvesting is a modern concept which makes dissipated heat useful by transferring thermal energy to other excitations. Most of the existing principles for energy harvesting are realized in systems which are heated continuously, for…
We derive the thermodynamic limits of harvesting power from the outgoing thermal radiation from the ambient to the cold outer space. The derivations are based on a duality relation between thermal engines that harvest solar radiation and…
The concept of thermal machines has evolved from the canonical steam engine to the recently proposed nanoscopic quantum systems as working fluids. The latter obey quantum open system dynamics and frequently operate in non-equilibrium…
We demonstrate experimentally an autonomous nanoscale energy harvester that utilises the physics of resonant tunnelling quantum dots. Gate defined quantum dots on GaAs/AlGaAs high-electron-mobility transistors are placed on either side of a…
A huge amount of thermal energy is available close to material surfaces in radiative and non-radiative states, which can be useful for matter characterization or for energy devices. One way to harness this near-field energy is to scatter it…
Industrial processes release substantial quantities of waste heat, which can be harvested to generate electricity. At present, the conversion of low grade waste heat to electricity relies solely on thermoelectric materials, but such…
We derive an efficiency bound for continuous quantum heat engines absorbing heat from squeezed thermal reservoirs. Our approach relies on a full-counting statistics description of nonequilibrium transport and it is not limited to the…
We describe and demonstrate a new energy harvesting technology based on a microfluidic realization of a Wimshurst influence machine. The prototype device converts the mechanical energy of a pressure-driven flow into electrical energy, using…
Thermoelectric energy harvesters can have a much higher conversion efficiency by implementing quantum dots/wells between the high temperature region and the low temperature region. However they still suffer a limitation of the maximum…