Related papers: Beyond the Carnot limit: work extraction via an en…
A suitable way of quantifying work for microscopic quantum systems has been constantly debated in the field of quantum thermodynamics. One natural approach is to measure the average increase in energy of an ancillary system, called the…
We analyze the entropy production and the maximal extractable work from a squeezed thermal reservoir. The nonequilibrium quantum nature of the reservoir induces an entropy transfer with a coherent contribution while modifying its thermal…
It is possible to extract work from a quantum-mechanical system whose dynamics is governed by a time-dependent cyclic Hamiltonian. An energy bath is required to operate such a quantum engine in place of the heat bath used to run a…
We investigate, in an analytical fashion, quantum Carnot cycles of a microscopic heat engine coupled to two nite heat reservoirs, whose internal cycles could own higher e ciency than the standard Carnot limit without consuming extra quantum…
A quantum engine fueled by quantum measurement is proposed. Under the finite-time adiabatic driving regime, the conversion of heat to work is realized without the compression and expansion of the resonance frequency. The work output,…
A heat engine operating in the one-shot finite-size regime, where systems composed of a small number of quantum particles interact with hot and cold baths and are restricted to one-shot measurements, delivers fluctuating work. Further,…
The interplay between quantum-mechanical properties, such as coherence, and classical notions, such as energy, is a subtle topic at the forefront of quantum thermodynamics. The traditional Carnot argument limits the conversion of heat to…
We study the modification of the second law of thermodynamics for a quantum system interacting with a reservoir regarding quantum coherence. The whole system is isolated so that neither energy nor information is lost. It is discovered that…
The efficiency of cyclic heat engines is limited by the Carnot bound. This bound follows from the second law of thermodynamics and is attained by engines that operate between two thermal baths under the reversibility condition whereby the…
The efficient conversion of thermal energy to mechanical work by a heat engine is an ongoing technological challenge. Since the pioneering work of Carnot, it is known that the efficiency of heat engines is bounded by a fundamental upper…
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…
The efficiency at maximum power output of linear irreversible Carnot-like heat engines is investigated based on the assumption that the rate of irreversible entropy production of working substance in each "isothermal" process is a quadratic…
Classical engines turn thermal resources into work, which is maximized for reversible operations. The quantum realm has expanded the range of useful operations beyond energy conversion, and incoherent resources beyond thermal reservoirs.…
Developments in the thermodynamics of small quantum systems envisage non-classical thermal machines. In this scenario, energy fluctuations play a relevant role in the description of irreversibility. We experimentally implement a quantum…
We present the exact theory of quantum engines whose working medium is a network of driven oscillators performing an arbitrary cyclic process while coupled to thermal and nonthermal reservoirs. We show that when coupled to a single…
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 consider quantum heat engines that operate between nonequilibrium stationary reservoirs. We evaluate their maximum efficiency from the positivity of the entropy production and show that it can be expressed in terms of an effective…
From an entropy-based formulation of the first law of thermodynamics in the quantum regime, we investigate the performance of Otto-like and Carnot-like engines for a single-qubit working medium. Within this framework, the first law includes…
Various engine types are thermodynamically equivalent in the quantum limit of small 'engine action'. Our previous derivation of the equivalence is restricted to Markovian heat baths and to implicit classical work repository (e.g., laser…
In this work, we analyze an Otto-type cycle operating with a working substance composed of a quantum harmonic oscillator (QHO). Unlike other studies in which the work extraction is done by varying the frequency of the QHO and letting it…