Related papers: Energetics of a simple microscopic heat engine
Optimizing the performance of thermal machines is an essential task of thermodynamics. We here consider the optimization of information engines that convert information about the state of a system into work. We concretely introduce a…
Situations where a spontaneous process of energy or matter transfer is enhanced by an external device are widespread in nature (human sweating system, enzyme catalysis, facilitated diffusion across bio-membranes, industrial heat…
Micro-to-nano scale thermal devices that operate under large thermal fluctuations, are an active field of research where instead the average values, the full distributions of thermodynamic quantities are important. Here we study a model of…
Particle-exchange heat engines operate without moving parts or time-dependent driving, relying solely on static energy-selective transport. Here, we realize a particle-exchange quantum heat engine based on a single diradical molecule, only…
We introduce a new class of mesoscopic heat engines consisting of a tunnel junction coupled to a linear thermal bath. Work is produced by transporting electrons up against a voltage bias like in ordinary thermoelectrics but heat is…
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…
We investigate the performance of an underdamped stochastic heat engine for a time-dependent harmonic oscillator. We analytically determine the optimal protocol that maximizes the efficiency at fixed power. The maximum efficiency reduces to…
We investigate fluctuations of output work for a class of Stirling heat engines with working fluid composed of interacting units and compare these fluctuations to an average work output. In particular, we focus on engine performance close…
A system consisting of two slabs with different temperatures can exhibit a non-equilibrium lateral Casimir force on either one of the slabs when Lorentz reciprocity is broken in at least one of the slabs. This system constitutes a photonic…
We study the efficiency at maximum power of non-adiabatic dissipative (internally dissipative friction in finite time adiabatic processes) Carnot-like heat engines operate in finite time under the power law dissipation regime. We find that…
Established heat engines in quantum regime can be modeled with various quantum systems as working substances. For example, in the non-relativistic case, we can model the heat engine using infinite potential well as a working substance to…
We study the unitary time evolution of a simple quantum Hamiltonian describing a heat engine coupled to two heat baths. The engine is modeled as a three-level system. Each heat bath consists of a single harmonic oscillator. The engine is…
We investigate maximum efficiency at a given power for low-dissipation heat engines. Close to maximum power, the maximum gain in efficiency scales as a square root of relative loss in power and this scaling is universal for a broad class of…
We report on the study of student difficulties regarding heat engine in the context of Stirling cycle within upper-division undergraduate thermal physics course. An in-class test about a Stirling engine with a regenerator was taken by three…
We analyse a device aimed at the conversion of heat into electrical energy, based on a closed cycle in which a distiller generates two solutions at different concentrations, and an electrochemical cell consumes the concentration difference,…
In 1975, Courzon and Ahlborn studied a Carnot engine with thermal losses and got an expression for its efficiency that described better the performance of actual heat machines than the traditional result due to Carnot. In their original…
A long standing open problem whether a heat engine with finite power achieves the Carnot efficiency is investigated. We rigorously prove a general trade-off inequality on thermodynamic efficiency and time interval of a cyclic process with…
We explore the thermodynamics of stochastic heat engines in presence of stochastic resetting. The set-up comprises an engine whose working substance is a Brownian particle undergoing overdamped Langevin dynamics in a harmonic potential with…
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…
We quantify the prior information to infer the optimal characteristics for a constrained thermodynamic process of maximum work extraction for a pair of non-identical finite systems. The total entropy of the whole system remains conserved.…