English

Efficiency estimation for an equilibrium version of Maxwell refrigerator

Statistical Mechanics 2021-02-24 v1

Abstract

Maxwell refrigerator as a device that can transfer heat from a cold to hot temperature reservoir making use of information reservoir was introduced by Mandal et al. \cite{Mandal2013a}. The model has a two state demon and a bit stream interacting with two thermal reservoirs simultaneously. We work out a simpler version of the refrigerator where the demon and bit system interact with the reservoirs separately and for a duration long enough to establish equilibrium. The efficiency, η\eta, of the device when working as an engine as well as the coefficient of performance (COP) when working as a refrigerator are calculated. It is shown that the maximum efficiency matches that of a Carnot engine/refrigerator working between the same temperatures, as expected. The COP at maximum power decreases as 1Th\frac{1}{T_h} when Th>TcΔET_h >T_c \gg \Delta E (kB=1k_B = 1), where ThT_h and TcT_c are the temperatures of the hot and cold reservoirs respectively and ΔE\Delta E is the level spacing of the demon. η\eta at maximum power of the device, when working as a heat engine, is found to be Th0.779+Th\frac{T_h}{0.779 + T_h} when TcΔET_c \ll \Delta E and ThΔET_h \gg \Delta E.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.02505,
  title  = {Efficiency estimation for an equilibrium version of Maxwell refrigerator},
  author = {Toby Joseph and Kiran V},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.02505},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:40:33.515Z