Quantum bath refrigeration towards absolute zero: unattainability principle challenged
Quantum Physics
2012-10-16 v1
Abstract
A minimal model of a quantum refrigerator (QR), i.e. a periodically phase-flipped two-level system permanently coupled to a finite-capacity bath (cold bath) and an infinite heat dump (hot bath), is introduced and used to investigate the cooling of the cold bath towards the absolute zero (T=0). Remarkably, the temperature scaling of the cold-bath cooling rate reveals that it does not vanish as T->0 for certain realistic quantized baths, e.g. phonons in strongly disordered media (fractons) or quantized spin-waves in ferromagnets (magnons). This result challenges Nernst's third-law formulation known as the unattainability principle.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1208.1015,
title = {Quantum bath refrigeration towards absolute zero: unattainability principle challenged},
author = {Michal Kolář and David Gelbwaser-Klimovsky and Robert Alicki and Gershon Kurizki},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1208.1015},
year = {2012}
}