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Related papers: Quantum Heat Engines, the Second Law and Maxwell's…

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We propose employing a quantum heat engine as a sensitive probe for thermal baths. In particular, we study a single-atom Otto engine operating in an open thermodynamic cycle. Owing to its cyclic nature, the engine is capable of translating…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-05-15 Amikam Levy , Moritz Göb , Bo Deng , Kilian Singer , E. Torrontegui , Daqing Wang

The laws of thermodynamics strongly restrict the performance of thermal machines. Standard thermodynamics, initially developed for uncorrelated macroscopic systems, does not hold for microscopic systems correlated with their environments.…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-11-13 Milton Aguilar , Eric Lutz

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…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2013-01-14 E. Muñoz , F. J. Peña

Recent studies have investigated the role of entanglement in the operation of a two-qubit system as a heat engine, showing that work can be extracted from a single heat bath without direct heat dissipation between the two-qubit system and…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-02-10 Hachem Tarif , Abdallah Slaoui , Rachid Ahl Laamara

In this work, we introduce the concept of the fractional quantum heat engine. We examine the space-fractional quantum Szilard heat engine as an example to show that the space-fractional quantum heat engines can produce higher efficiency…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-12-28 Ekrem Aydiner

The theory of quantum thermodynamics investigates how the concepts of heat, work, and temperature can be carried over to the quantum realm, where fluctuations and randomness are fundamentally unavoidable. These lecture notes provide an…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-17 Patrick P. Potts

Recent research on the thermodynamic arrow of time, at the microscopic scale, has questioned the universality of its direction. Theoretical studies showed that quantum correlations can be used to revert the natural heat flow (from the hot…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-06-13 Ivan Henao , Roberto M. Serra

In the classical limit no work is needed to couple a system to a bath with sufficiently weak coupling strength (or with arbitrarily finite coupling strength for a linear system) at the same temperature. In the quantum domain this may be…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-11-13 Ilki Kim , Guenter Mahler

A model computational quantum thermodynamic network is constructed with two variable temperature baths coupled by a linker system, with an asymmetry in the coupling of the linker to the two baths. It is found in computational simulations…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-11-10 Phillip C. Lotshaw , Michael E. Kellman

In this paper, we analyze the operation of an Otto cycle heat machine driven by a non-interacting two-dimensional electron gas on a twisted geometry. We show that due to both the energy quantization on this structure and the adiabatic…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-10-28 Cleverson Filgueiras , Moises Rojas , Edilberto O. Silva , Carlos Romero

Quantum thermodynamics addresses the emergence of thermodynamical laws from quantum mechanics. The link is based on the intimate connection of quantum thermodynamics with the theory of open quantum systems. Quantum mechanics inserts…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-06-24 Ronnie Kosloff

Energy is often partitioned into heat and work by two independent paths corresponding to the change in the eigenenergies or the probability distributions of a quantum system. The discrepancies of the heat and work for various quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-08-01 Shan-He Su , Jin-Fu Chen , Yu-Han Ma , Jin-Can Chen , Chang-Pu Sun

Quantum correlation, or entanglement, is now believed to be an indispensable physical resource for certain tasks in quantum information processing, for which classically correlated states cannot be useful. Besides information processing,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-11-10 K. Maruyama , F. Morikoshi , V. Vedral

There is a current interest in quantum thermodynamics in the context of open quantum systems. An important issue is the consistency of quantum thermodynamics, in particular the second law of thermodynamics, i.e., the flow of heat from a hot…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-07-30 Hans C. Fogedby

In quantum systems which satisfy the hypothesis of equal weights for eigenstates [4], the maximum work principle (for extremely slow and relatively fast operation) is derived by using quantum dynamics alone. This may be a crucial step in…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 Hal Tasaki

The question of whether quantum coherence is a resource beneficial or detrimental to the performance of quantum heat engines has been thoroughly studied but remains undecided. To isolate the contribution of coherence, we analyze the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-02-01 Stefan Aimet , Hyukjoon Kwon

We consider a minimal model of a quantum rotator composed of a single particle confined in an harmonic potential and driven by two temperature-biased heat reservoirs. In the case the particle potential is rendered asymmetric and rotated an…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-06-01 Hans C. Fogedby , Alberto Imparato

We study energetic exchanges and fluctuations in two-stroke quantum thermodynamic engines where the working fluid is represented by two multilevel quantum systems, i.e. qudits, the heat flow is allowed by relaxation with two thermal…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-08-03 Massimiliano F. Sacchi

Quantum physics revolutionized classical disciplines of mechanics, statistical physics, and electrodynamics. One branch of scientific knowledge however seems untouched: thermodynamics. Major motivation behind thermodynamics is to develop…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-08-28 Ali Ü. C. Hardal , Özgür E. Müstecaplıoglu

The second law of thermodynamics, formulated as an ultimate bound on the maximum extractable work, has been rigorously derived in multiple scenarios. However, the unavoidable limitations that emerge due to the lack of control on small…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-04-27 H. Wilming , R. Gallego , J. Eisert