English

Thermodynamic bound on heat to power conversion

Statistical Mechanics 2018-08-27 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

In systems described by the scattering theory, there is an upper bound, lower than Carnot, on the efficiency of steady-state heat to work conversion at a given output power. We show that interacting systems can overcome such bound and saturate, in the thermodynamic limit, the much more favorable linear-response bound. This result is rooted in the possibility for interacting systems to achieve the Carnot efficiency at the thermodynamic limit without delta-energy filtering, so that large efficiencies can be obtained without greatly reducing power.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.06646,
  title  = {Thermodynamic bound on heat to power conversion},
  author = {Rongxiang Luo and Giuliano Benenti and Giulio Casati and Jiao Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.06646},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

11 pages, 11 figures, added an illustrative example in two dimensions and discussed the bound on efficiency for a given cooling power

R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:17:54.316Z