Related papers: Work performed by a Classical-"reversible"-Carnot …
A system can be driven between metastable configurations by a time-dependent driving protocol, which uses external control parameters to change the potential energy of the system. Here we investigate the correspondence between driving…
Macroscopic cyclic heat engines have been a major motivation for the emergence of thermodynamics. In the last decade, cyclic heat engines that have large fluctuations and operate at finite time were studied within the more modern framework…
The dynamics of a point charged particle which is driven by a uniform external electric field and moves in a medium of elastic scatterers is investigated. Using rudimentary approaches, we reproduce, in one dimension, the known results that…
Thermodynamics places a limit on the efficiency of heat engines, but not on their output power or on how the power and efficiency change with the engine's cycle time. In this manuscript, we develop a geometrical description of the power and…
We present a theory of resonant processes in a frozen gas of atoms interacting via dipole-dipole potentials that vary as $r^{-3}$, where $r$ is the interatomic separation. We supply an exact result for a single atom in a given state…
We studied the efficiency of two different schemes for a quantum heat engine, by considering a single Dirac particle trapped in an infinite one-dimensional potential well as the "working substance." The first scheme is a cycle, composed of…
We compute the distribution of the work done in driving a single Ising spin with a time-dependent magnetic field. Using Glauber dynamics we perform Monte-Carlo simulations to find the work distributions at different driving rates. We find…
The Clausius-Clapeyron relation and its analogs in other first-order phase transitions, such as type-I superconductors, are derived using very elementary methods, without appealing to the more advanced concepts of entropy or Gibbs free…
Whether the strong coupling to thermal baths can improve the performance of quantum thermal machines remains an open issue under active debate. Here, we revisit quantum thermal machines operating with the quasi-static Carnot cycle and aim…
The thermal efficiency of the kinesin cycle at stalling is presently a matter of some debate, with published predictions ranging from 0 (A. W. C. Lau, D. Lacoste and K. Mallick, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 158102 (2007); D. Lacoste, A. W. C. Lau…
We suggest that coarsening dynamics can be described in terms of a generalized random walk, with the dynamics of the growing length $L(t)$ controlled by a drift term, $\mu(L)$, and a diffusive one, ${\cal D}(L)$. We apply this…
In contrast to the classical concept of a Carnot engine that alternates contact between heat baths of different temperatures, naturally occurring processes usually harvest energy from anisotropy, being exposed simultaneously to chemical and…
We analytically derive maximum efficiency at given cooling power for Carnot-type low-dissipation refrigerators. The corresponding optimal cycle duration depends on a single parameter, which is a specific combination of irreversibility…
Recent experiments have demonstrated the generation of coherent mechanical oscillations in a suspended carbon nanotube, which are driven by an electric current through the device above a certain voltage threshold, in close analogy with a…
On the assumption that experimentally validated tabulated thermodynamic properties of saturated fluids published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology are accurate, a theoretical thermodynamic cycle can be demonstrated that…
The dissipative heat engine (DHE) is based on a Carnot cycle with external heat Qin received at temperature Ts and released at To < Ts. In contrast to the classical Carnot engine, mechanical work Ad in the DHE is not exported to external…
We study a class of cyclic Brownian heat engines in the framework of finite-time thermodynamics. For infinitely long cycle times, the engine works at the Carnot efficiency limit producing, however, zero power. For the efficiency at maximum…
Two granular gases separated by an adiabatic piston and initially in the same macroscopic state are considered. It is found that a phase transition with an spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs. When the mass of the piston is increased…
The condition for stationary engines to attain the Carnot efficiency in and beyond the linear response regime is investigated. We find that this condition for finite-size engines is significantly different from that for macroscopic engines…
We develop a general method for calculating the thermal efficiency of arbitrary thermodynamic cycles defined in the pressure-volume ($p-V$) diagram. To demonstrate how effective our approach is, we calculate the thermal efficiency of ideal…