Related papers: Balancing Power, Efficiency, and Constancy under B…
Non-equilibrium effects may have a profound impact on the performance of thermal devices performing thermodynamic tasks such as refrigeration or heat pumping. The possibility of enhancing the performance of thermodynamic operations by means…
We study the efficiency at maximum power of two coupled heat engines, using thermoelectric generators (TEGs) as engines. Assuming that the heat and electric charge fluxes in the TEGs are strongly coupled, we simulate numerically the…
Nanoscale heat engines are subject to large fluctuations which affect their precision. The Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation (TUR) provides a trade-off between output power, fluctuations and entropic cost. This trade-off may be overcome by…
The Fluctuation Relation for a stationary state, kept at constant energy by a deterministic thermostat - the Gallavotti-Cohen Theorem -- relies on the ergodic properties of the system considered. We show that when perturbed by an…
There is a relation between the irreversibility of thermodynamic processes as expressed by the breaking of time-reversal symmetry, and the entropy production in such processes. We explain on an elementary mathematical level the relations…
We develop a perturbation theory of quantum (and classical) master equations with slowly varying parameters, applicable to systems which are externally controlled on a time scale much longer than their characteristic relaxation time. We…
Machines are only Carnot efficient if they are reversible, but then their power output is vanishingly small. Here we ask, what is the maximum efficiency of an irreversible device with finite power output? We use a nonlinear scattering…
We study two-mode bosonic engines undergoing an Otto cycle. The energy exchange between the two bosonic systems is provided by a tunable unitary bilinear interaction in the mode operators modeling frequency conversion, whereas the cyclic…
For nonequilibrium steady states, we identify observables whose fluctuations satisfy a general symmetry and for which a new reciprocity relation can be shown. Unlike the situation in recently discussed fluctuation theorems, these…
The constraint relation for efficiency and power is crucial to design optimal heat engines operating within finite time. We find a universal constraint between efficiency and output power for heat engines operating in the low-dissipation…
The full optimization of a quantum heat engine requires operating at high power, high efficiency, and high stability (i.e. low power fluctuations). However, these three objectives cannot be simultaneously optimized - as indicated by the…
Information engines harness measurement and feedback to convert energy into useful work. In this study, we investigate the fundamental trade-offs between ergotropic output power, thermodynamic efficiency and information-to-work conversion…
We introduce the idea of weakly coherent collisional models, where the elements of an environment interacting with a system of interest are prepared in states that are approximately thermal, but have an amount of coherence proportional to a…
We investigate the efficiency at maximum power of an irreversible Carnot engine performing finite-time cycles between two reservoirs at temperatures $T_h$ and $T_c$ $(T_c<T_h)$, taking into account of internally dissipative friction in two…
As a fundamental measure of stability in nonequilibrium thermodynamics, fluctuations provide critical insight into the performance and reliability of heat engines. In this work, we establish universal fluctuation-dissipation bounds that…
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 present the general theory of a quantum heat machine based on an $N$-level system (working medium) whose $N-1$ excited levels are degenerate, a prerequisite for steady-state interlevel coherence. Our goal is to find out: To what extent…
Giving a universal upper bound on the power output of heat engines is a long-standing open problem. We tackle this problem for generic quantum machines in self-contained formulation by carefully including the switching process of the…
The efficiency statistics of a small thermodynamic machine has been recently investigated assuming that the total dissipation was a linear combination of two currents: the input and output currents. Here, we relax this standard assumption…
A complex interplay between the academic issue about generalization of the thermodynamics and the practical matter about setting standards for a sustainable evolution of both tailored devices and natural systems is considered. It is…