Related papers: Beyond the Carnot limit: work extraction via an en…
The physical foundations of a variety of emerging technologies --- ranging from the applications of quantum entanglement in quantum information to the applications of nonequilibrium bulk and interface phenomena in microfluidics, biology,…
The proper definition of entropy is fundamental to the relationship between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. It also plays a major role in the recent debate about the validity of the concept of negative temperature. In this paper,…
The emerging quantum technological apparatuses [1,2], such as the quantum computer [3-5], call for extreme performance in thermal engineering at the nanoscale [6]. Importantly, quantum mechanics sets a fundamental upper limit for the flow…
Quantum heat engines are nanoscale devices that convert heat into work by exploiting quantum effects, such as coherence and interference. Previous studies of these devices did not consider spin-dependent effects, which can influence the…
In this paper, we consider a model of two-level quantum heat engine to investigate the explicit analytic expression for the thermodynamics quantities in different condition under the finite-time operation. In this engine, the working…
Generalized measurements may allow the control of its back-action on the quantum system by interpolating from a very weak to strong projective action. Such a measurement can fuel a quantum heat engine or extract work depending on the…
The work content of non-equilibrium systems in relation to a heat bath is often analyzed in terms of expectation values of an underlying random work variable. However, we show that when optimizing the expectation value of the extracted…
An explicit expression for the temperature of an open two-level quantum system is obtained as a function of local properties, under the hypothesis of weak interaction with the environment. This temperature is defined for both equilibrium…
Any quantum operation applied on a physical system is performed as a unitary transformation on a larger extended system. If the extension used is a heat bath in thermal equilibrium, the concomitant change in the state of the bath…
The recent advances in the study of thermodynamics of microscopic processes have driven the search for new developments in energy converters utilizing quantum effects. We here propose a universal framework to describe the thermodynamics of…
The entropy produced when a quantum system is driven away from equilibrium can be decomposed in two parts, one related with populations and the other with quantum coherences. The latter is usually based on the so-called relative entropy of…
We propose a scheme for a quantum thermal machine made by atoms interacting with a single non-equilibrium electromagnetic field. The field is produced by a simple configuration of macroscopic objects held at thermal equilibrium at different…
This paper considers work extraction from a quantum system to a work storage system (or weight) following reference [1]. An alternative approach is here developed that relies on the comparison of subspace dimensions without a need to…
We consider the efficiency at maximum power of a quantum Otto engine, which uses a spin or a harmonic system as its working substance and works between two heat reservoirs at constant temperatures $T_h$ and $T_c$ $ (<T_h)$. Although the…
Entropy production is a key quantity characterizing nonequilibrium systems. However, it can often be difficult to compute in practice, as it requires detailed information about the system and the dynamics it undergoes. This becomes even…
Quantum reservoir engineering leverages dissipative processes to achieve desired behavior, with applications ranging from entanglement generation to quantum error correction. Therein, a structured environment acts as an entropy sink for the…
We introduce a natural way of visualizing the entropy production in heat transfer processes between a system and a thermal reservoir. This representation is particularly useful to highlight the asymmetric character of the heating and…
We study the stochastic energetic exchanges in quantum heat engines. Due to microreversibility, these obey a fluctuation relation, called the heat engine fluctuation relation, which implies the Carnot bound: no machine can have an…
We introduce the resource-theoretic free energy of a quantum channel as the maximal work extractable from the channel as its output equilibrates to a thermal state and its reference system remains locally intact. It is proportional to the…
In this study, we advance the understanding of non-equilibrium systems by deriving thermodynamic relations for a heat engine operating under an exponentially decreasing temperature profile. Such thermal configurations closely mimic…