Related papers: Beyond the Carnot limit: work extraction via an en…
The thermodynamics of quantum systems coupled to periodically modulated heat baths and work reservoirs is developed. By identifying affinities and fluxes, the first and second law are formulated consistently. In the linear response regime,…
The key question of this paper is whether work can be extracted from a heat engine by using purely quantum mechanical information. If the answer is yes, what is its mathematical formula? First, by using a bipartite memory we show that the…
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…
The non-equilibrium process due to irreversible heat exchanges occurring during a temperature modulated differential scanning calorimetry experiment is investigated in detail. This enables us to define an experimental frequency dependent…
We propose the minimally nonlinear irreversible heat engine as a new general theoretical model to study the efficiency at the maximum power $\eta^*$ of heat engines operating between the hot heat reservoir at the temperature $T_h$ and the…
We introduce a method to construct a quantum battery and a quantum Otto heat engine using a Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) center spin coupled to a mechanical oscillator in a highly detuned regime. By precisely controlling the NV spin, we enable…
It is a central question in quantum thermodynamics to determine how irreversible is a process that transforms an initial state $\rho$ to a final state $\sigma$, and whether such irreversibility can be thought of as a useful resource. For…
In systems described by the scattering theory, there is an upper bound, lower than Carnot, on the efficiency of steady-state heat to work conversion at a given output power. We show that interacting systems can overcome such bound and…
A quantum system which can store energy, and from which one can extract useful work, is known as a quantum battery. Such a device raises interesting issues surrounding how quantum physics can provide certain advantages in the charging,…
We show that finite system-reservoir coupling imposes a distinct quantum limit on the performance of a non-equilibrium quantum heat engine. Even in the absence of quantum friction along the isentropic strokes, finite system-reservoir…
We present a mechanism for efficiency increase in quantum heat engines containing internal energy levels that do not couple to the external work sink. The gain is achieved by using these levels to channel heat in a direction opposite to the…
The question of whether quantum coherence is a resource beneficial or detrimental to the performance of quantum heat engines has been thoroughly studied but remains undecided. To isolate the contribution of coherence, we analyze the…
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…
Quantum open systems evolve according to completely positive, trace preserving maps acting on the density operator, which can equivalently be unraveled in term of so-called quantum trajectories. These stochastic sequences of pure states…
The efficiency of microscopic heat engines in a thermally heterogenous environment is considered. We show that, as a consequence of the recently discovered entropic anomaly, quasi-static engines, whose efficiency is maximal in a fluid at…
We present the spin quantum Otto machine under different optimization criterion when function either as a heat engine or a refrigerator. We examine the optimal performance of the heat engine and refrigerator depending on their efficiency,…
On the assumption that experimentally validated tabulated thermodynamic properties of saturated fluids published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology are accurate, a theoretical thermodynamic cycle can be demonstrated that…
We study a quantum thermal engine model for which the heat transfer law is determined by Einstein's theory of radiation. The working substance of the quantum engine is assumed to be a two-level quantum systems of which the constituent…
In this work we include, for the Carnot cycle, irreversibilities of linear finite rate of heat transferences between the heat engine and its reservoirs, heat leak between the reservoirs and internal dissipations of the working fluid. A…
Cyclical heat engines are a paradigm of classical thermodynamics, but are impractical for miniaturization because they rely on moving parts. A more recent concept is particle-exchange (PE) heat engines, which uses energy filtering to…