Related papers: Cyclic active refrigerators
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system is non-decreasing. Discussing the Second Law in the quantum world poses new challenges and provides new opportunities, involving fundamental…
With the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick (LMG) model as an illustration, we construct a thermodynamic cycle composed of two isothermal processes and two isomagnetic field processes and study the thermodynamic performance of this cycle accompanied by…
Interactions between a quantum system and its environment at low temperatures can lead to violations of thermal laws for the system. The source of these violations is the entanglement between system and environment, which prevents the…
The quantum analog of Carnot cycles in few-particle systems consists of two quantum adiabatic steps and two isothermal steps. This construction is formally justified by use of a minimum work principle. It is then shown, without relying on…
The concepts of weighted reciprocal of temperature and weighted thermal flux are proposed for a heat engine operating between two heat baths and outputting mechanical work. With the aid of these two concepts, the generalized thermodynamic…
We present the design for a thermodynamic computer that can perform arbitrary nonlinear calculations in or out of equilibrium. Simple thermodynamic circuits, fluctuating degrees of freedom in contact with a thermal bath and confined by a…
The historical development of the Carnot cycle necessitated the construction of isothermal and adiabatic pathways within the cycle that were also mechanically "reversible" which lead eventually to the Kelvin-Clausius development of the…
We show that coupled two level systems like qubits studied in quantum information can be used as a thermodynamic machine. At least three qubits or spins are necessary and arranged in a chain. The system is interfaced between two split baths…
Hydrodynamic flows are often generated in colloidal suspensions. Since colloidal particles are frequently used to construct stochastic heat engines, we study how the hydrodynamic flows influence the output parameters of the engine. We study…
Information can improve heat engine performance, but the underlying principles are still not so clear. Here we introduce a Carnot information machine (CIE) and obtain a quantitative relationship between the engine performance and…
What are the fundamental limitations for finite-time engines that extract work from active nonequilibrium systems, and what are the optimal protocols that approach them? We show that the finite-time work extraction for nonconservative…
On the one hand, the dissipated heat of a thermodynamic work extraction process upper bounds the non-predictive information, which the associated system encodes about its environment. Thus, emergent information processing capabilities can…
The context of the present paper is stochastic thermodynamics - an approach to nonequilibrium thermodynamics rooted within the broader framework of stochastic control. In contrast to the classical paradigm of Carnot engines, we herein…
We study microscopic engines that use a single active particle as their "working medium". Part of the energy required to drive the directed motion of the particle can be recovered as work, even at constant temperature. A wide class of…
Autonomous quantum thermal machines are particularly suited to understand how correlations between thermal baths, a load, and a thermal machine affect the overall thermodynamic functioning of the setup. Here, we show that by tuning the…
Maxwellian ratchets are autonomous, finite-state thermodynamic engines that implement input-output informational transformations. Previous studies of these "demons" focused on how they exploit environmental resources to generate work: They…
We study stochastic thermodynamics of over-damped Brownian motion in a flowing fluid. Unlike some previous works, we treat the effects of the flow field as a non-conservational driving force acting on the Brownian particle. This allows us…
Quantum coherence has been shown to impact the operational capabilities of quantum systems performing thermodynamic tasks in a significant way, and yet the possibility and conditions for genuine coherence-enhanced thermodynamic operation…
The Carnot cycle imposes a fundamental upper limit to the efficiency of a macroscopic motor operating between two thermal baths. However, this bound needs to be reinterpreted at microscopic scales, where molecular bio-motors and some…
The reversible nature of thermodynamical cycles is an idealisation based on the assumption of perfect quasi-static dynamics. As a consequence of this assumption, ideal engines operate at the maximum efficiency but have zero power. Realistic…