Related papers: Heat, work, and fluctuations in a driven quantum r…
Controlling heat flow at the quantum level is a key challenge for next-generation quantum technologies, including thermal management and quantum information processing. Here, we investigate quantum heat transport in an asymmetrically driven…
How to rigorously define thermodynamic quantities such as heat, work, and internal energy in open quantum systems driven far from equilibrium remains a significant open question in quantum thermodynamics. Heat is a quantity whose…
Quantum thermal transistor is a microscopic thermodynamical device that can modulate and amplify heat current through two terminals by the weak heat current at the third terminal. Here we study the common environmental effects on a quantum…
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…
Controlling the temperature of nano-scale quantum systems is becoming increasingly important in the efforts to develop thermal devices such as quantum heat valves, heat engines, and refrigerators, and to explore fundamental concepts in…
Quantum thermodynamics allows for the interconversion of quantum coherence and mechanical work. Quantum coherence is thus a potential physical resource for quantum machines. However, formulating a general nonequilibrium thermodynamics of…
The design of a mesoscopic self-oscillating heat engine that works thanks to purely quantum effects is presented. The proposed scheme is amenable to experimental implementation with current state-of-the-art nanotechnology and materials. One…
The inexorable miniaturisation of technologies, the relentless drive to improve efficiency and the enticing prospect of boosting performance through quantum effects are all compelling reasons to investigate microscopic machines. Thermal…
One of the principal objectives of quantum thermodynamics is to explore quantum effects and their potential beneficial role in thermodynamic tasks like work extraction or refrigeration. So far, even though several papers have already shown…
Quantum thermal machines can perform useful tasks, such as delivering power, cooling, or heating. In this work, we consider hybrid thermal machines, that can execute more than one task simultaneously. We characterize and find optimal…
We study coupled quantum systems as the working media of thermodynamic machines. Under a suitable phase-space transformation, the coupled systems can be expressed as a composition of independent subsystems. We find that for the coupled…
We study the performance of a quantum Otto cycle using a harmonic work medium and undergoing collisional dynamics with finite-size reservoirs. We span the dynamical regimes of the work strokes from strongly non-adiabatic to quasi-static…
Small systems (of interest in the areas of nanophysics, quantum information, etc.) are particularly vulnerable to environmental effects. Thus, we determine various thermodynamic functions for an oscillator in an arbitrary heat bath at…
We consider a class of quantum heat engines consisting of two subsystems interacting via a unitary transformation and coupled to two separate baths at different temperatures $T_h > T_c$. The purpose of the engine is to extract work due to…
Assigning the variations of internal energy into heat or work contributions is a challenging task due to the fact that these properties are trajectory dependent. A number of proposals have been put forward for open quantum systems following…
We study the thermoelectric properties and heat-to-work conversion performance of an interacting, multi-level quantum dot (QD) weakly coupled to electronic reservoirs. We focus on the sequential tunneling regime. The dynamics of the charge…
Recent evidence suggests that quantum effects may have functional importance in biological light-harvesting systems. Along with delocalized electronic excitations, it is now suspected that quantum coherent interactions with certain…
Heat transport in open quantum systems is particularly susceptible to the modeling of system-reservoir interactions. It thus requires to consistently treat the coupling between a quantum system and its environment. While perturbative…
Coherent quantum oscillators are basic physical systems both in quantum statistical physics and quantum thermodynamics. Their realizations in lab often involve solid-state devices sensitive to changes in ambient temperature. We represent…
Coherent interconversion between optical and mechanical excitations in an optomechanical cavity can be used to engineer a quantum heat engine. This heat engine is based on an Otto cycle between a cold photonic reservoir and a hot phononic…