Quantum heat engines (QHE) are thermal machines where the working substance is a quantum object. In the extreme case, the working medium can be a single particle or a few-level quantum system. The study of QHE has shown a remarkable similarity with macroscopic thermodynamical results, thus raising the issue of what is quantum in quantum thermodynamics. Our main result is the thermodynamical equivalence of all engine types in the quantum regime of small action with respect to Planck's constant. They have the same power, the same heat, and the same efficiency, and they even have the same relaxation rates and relaxation modes. Furthermore, it is shown that QHE have quantum-thermodynamic signature; i.e., thermodynamic measurements can confirm the presence of quantum effects in the device. We identify generic coherent and stochastic work extraction mechanisms and show that coherence enables power outputs that greatly exceed the power of stochastic (dephased) engines.

Quantum thermodynamics supplies a consistent description of quantum heat engines and refrigerators up to a single few-level system coupled to the environment. Once the environment is split into three (a hot, cold, and work reservoir), a heat engine can operate. The device converts the positive gain into power, with the gain obtained from population inversion between the components of the device. Reversing the operation transforms the device into a quantum refrigerator. The quantum tricycle, a device connected by three external leads to three heat reservoirs, is used as a template for engines and refrigerators. The equation of motion for the heat currents and power can be derived from first principles. Only a global description of the coupling of the device to the reservoirs is consistent with the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Optimization of the devices leads to a balanced set of parameters in which the couplings to the three reservoirs are of the same order and the external driving field is in resonance. When analyzing refrigerators, one needs to devote special attention to a dynamical version of the third law of thermodynamics. Bounds on the rate of cooling when Tc→0 are obtained by optimizing the cooling current. All refrigerators as Tc→0 show universal behavior. The dynamical version of the third law imposes restrictions on the scaling as Tc→0 of the relaxation rate γc and heat capacity cV of the cold bath.

Clausius statement of the second law of thermodynamics reads: Heat will flow spontaneously from a hot to cold reservoir. This statement should hold for transport of energy through a quantum network composed of small subsystems each coupled to a heat reservoir. When the coupling between nodes is small, it seems reasonable to construct a local master equation for each node in contact with the local reservoir. The energy transport through the network is evaluated by calculating the energy flux after the individual nodes are coupled. We show by analyzing the most simple network composed of two quantum nodes coupled to a hot and cold reservoir, that the local description can result in heat flowing from cold to hot reservoirs, even in the limit of vanishing coupling between the nodes. A global derivation of the master equation which prediagonalizes the total network Hamiltonian and within this framework derives the master equation, is always consistent with the second law of thermodynamics.

A quantum absorption refrigerator driven by noise is studied with the purpose of determining

The rate of temperature decrease of a cooled quantum bath is studied as its temperature is reduced to the absolute zero. The III-law of thermodynamics is then quantified dynamically by evaluating the characteristic exponent ζ of the cooling process dT (t) dt ∼ −T ζ when approaching the absolute zero, T → 0. A continuous model of a quantum refrigerator is employed consisting of a working medium composed either by two coupled harmonic oscillators or two coupled 2-level systems. The refrigerator is a nonlinear device merging three currents from three heat baths: a cold bath to be cooled, a hot bath as an entropy sink, and a driving bath which is the source of cooling power. A heat driven refrigerator (absorption refrigerator) is compared to a power driven refrigerator. When optimized both cases lead to the same exponent ζ, showing a lack of dependence on the form of the working medium and the characteristics of the drivers. The characteristic exponent is therefore determined by the properties of the cold reservoir and its interaction with the system. Two generic heat baths models are considered, a bath composed of harmonic oscillators and a bath composed from ideal Bose/Fermi gas. The restrictions on the interaction Hamiltonian imposed by the III-law are discussed. In the appendix the theory of periodicaly driven open systems and its implication to thermodynamics is outlined.