Related papers: The second law, Maxwell's daemon and work derivabl…
It is often claimed, that from a quantum system of d levels, and entropy S and heat bath of temperature T one can draw kT(ln d -S) amount of work. However, the usual arguments based on Szilard engine are not fully rigorous. Here we prove…
While the emergent field of quantum thermodynamics has the potential to impact energy science, the performance of thermal machines is often classical. We ask whether quantum effects can boost the performance of a thermal machine to reach…
An experimentally inspired model is constructed and rigorously solved from the Hamiltonian level where a dc circular spontaneous flow exists in absence of a magnetic field, irrespective of presence of dissipation causing otherwise proper…
We present a mechanism for efficiency increase in quantum heat engines containing internal energy levels that do not couple to the external work sink. The gain is achieved by using these levels to channel heat in a direction opposite to the…
The Brownian motion of a quantum particle in a harmonic confining potential and coupled to a harmonic quantum thermal bath is exactly solvable. It is shown that at low enough temperatures the stationary state is non-Gibbsian due to an…
Standard heat machines (engine, heat pump, refrigerator) are composed of a system ("working fluid") coupled to at least two equilibrium baths at different temperatures and periodically driven by an external device (piston or rotor) called…
Resource theories are a generic approach used to manage any valuable resource, such as entanglement, purity, and asymmetry. Such frameworks are characterized by two main elements: a set of predefined (free) operations and states, that one…
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…
In the present paper, several issues concerning the second law of thermodynamics, Maxwell's demon and Landauer's principle are dealt with. I argue that if the demon and the system on which it operates without dissipation of external energy…
We initially prepare a quantum linear oscillator weakly coupled to a bath in equilibrium at an arbitrary temperature. We disturb this system by varying a Hamiltonian parameter of the coupled oscillator, namely, either its spring constant or…
We consider the Non-Equilibrium Steady State induced by two infinite quantum thermal reservoirs at different temperatures and derive an inequality giving the upper bound of the work extracted by cyclic operations. This upper bound tends to…
We analyze an autonomous micro-engine as a closed quantum mechanical system, including the work it performs and the fuel it consumes. Our model system shows by example that it is possible to transfer energy steadily and spontaneously…
We studied the efficiency of two different schemes for a magnetically driven quantum heat engine, by considering as the working substance a single nonrelativistic particle trapped in a cylindrical potential well, in the presence of an…
We construct a quantum critical Otto engine that is powered by finite temperature baths. We show that the work output of the engine shows universal power law behavior that depends on the critical exponents of the working medium, as well as…
Quantum thermodynamics supplies a consistent description of quantum heat engines and refrigerators up to the level of a single few level system coupled to the environment. Once the environment is split into three;a hot, cold and work…
The Carnot theorem, one expression of the second law of thermodynamics, places a fundamental upper bound on the efficiency of heat engines operating between two heat baths. The Carnot theorem can be stated in a more generalized form for…
We present an autonomous Maxwell's demon scheme. It is first analysed theoretically in term of information exchange in a closed system and then implemented experimentally with a single Rydberg atom and a high-quality microwave resonator.…
Interesting effects arise in cyclic machines where both heat and ergotropy transfer take place between the energising bath and the system (the working fluid). Such effects correspond to unconventional decompositions of energy exchange…
An apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics occurs when an atom coupled to a zero-temperature bath, being necessarily in an excited state, is used to extract work from the bath. Here the fallacy is that it takes work to couple…
The second law of thermodynamics is discussed and reformulated from a quantum information theoretic perspective for open quantum systems using relative entropy. Specifically, the relative entropy of a quantum state with respect to…