相关论文: Sorption heat engines: simple inanimate negative e…

Thermal machines perform useful tasks--such as producing work, cooling, or heating--by exchanging energy, and possibly additional conserved quantities such as particles, with reservoirs. Here we consider thermal machines that perform more…

We construct the smallest possible self contained heat engines; one composed of only two qubits, the other of only a single qutrit. The engines are self-contained as they do not require external sources of work and/or control. They are able…

Self-replication is a capacity common to every species of living thing, and simple physical intuition dictates that such a process must invariably be fueled by the production of entropy. Here, we undertake to make this intuition rigorous…

The realization of microscopic heat engines has gained a surge of research interest in statistical physics, soft matter, and biological physics. A typical microscopic heat engine employs a colloidal particle trapped in a confining…

We propose an ion-trap implementation of the Vaccaro, Barnett and Wright et al. spin-heat engine (SHE); a hypothetical engine that operates between energy and spin thermal reservoirs rather than two energy reservoirs. The SHE operates in…

We propose a novel molecular device that pumps heat against a thermal gradient. The system consists of a molecular element connecting two thermal reservoirs that are characterized by different spectral properties. The pumping action is…

All existing heat machines are dissipative open systems. Hence, they cannot operate fully coherently. We propose to replace this conventional thermodynamic paradigm by a completely different one, whereby heat machines are nonlinear coherent…

Cyclic classical and quantum thermal machines show higher efficiency when the strokes are carried out quasi-statically. Recent theoretical and experimental work on figures of merit for thermal machines show that they have an advantage when…

The formulation of models describing quantum versions of heat engines plays an important role in the quest toward establishing the laws of thermodynamics in the quantum regime. Of particular importance is the description of stroke-based…

We consider quantum heat engines that operate between nonequilibrium stationary reservoirs. We evaluate their maximum efficiency from the positivity of the entropy production and show that it can be expressed in terms of an effective…

We report the experimental realization of a single-atom heat engine. An ion is confined in a linear Paul trap with tapered geometry and driven thermally by coupling it alternately to hot and cold reservoirs. The output power of the engine…

Active Brownian engines rectify energy from reservoirs composed of self-propelling non-equilibrium molecules into work. We consider a class of such engines based on an underdamped Brownian particle trapped in a power-law potential. The…

A bath with a negative temperature is a subject of intense debate in recent times. It raises fundamental questions not only on our understanding of negative temperature of a bath in connection with thermodynamics but also on the…

The concepts of weighted reciprocal of temperature and weighted thermal flux are proposed for a heat engine operating between two heat baths and outputting mechanical work. With the aid of these two concepts, the generalized thermodynamic…

Electrical heat engines driven by the Johnson-Nyquist noise of resistors are introduced. They utilize Coulomb's law and the fluctuation-dissipation theorem of statistical physics that is the reverse phenomenon of heat dissipation in a…

It is well known that heat pumps, while being all limited by the same basic thermodynamic laws, may find realization on systems as "small" and "quantum" as a three-level maser. In order to quantitatively assess how the performance of these…

We propose a scheme for a single-atom quantum heat engine based on ultra-cold atom technologies. Building on the high degree of control typical of cold atom systems, we demonstrate that three paradigmatic heat engines -- Carnot, Otto and…

We present an overview of recent advances in the study of energy dynamics and mechanisms for energy conversion in qubit systems with special focus on realizations in superconducting quantum circuits. We briefly introduce the relevant…

Once in its non-equilibrium steady state, a nanoscale system coupled to several heat baths may be thought-of as a quantum heat pump. Depending on the direction of its stationary heat flows it may function as e.g. a refrigerator or a heat…

Thermoelectric devices are heat engines, which operate as generators or refrigerators using the conduction electrons as a working fluid. The thermoelectric heat-to-work conversion efficiency has always been typically quite low, but much…