The role of energy exchange between a quantum system and its environment is investigated from the perspective of the Onsager conductance matrix. We consider the thermoelectric linear transport of an interacting quantum dot coupled to two terminals under the influence of an electrical potential and a thermal bias. We implement in our model the effect of coupling to electromagnetic environmental modes created by nearby electrons within the P (E)-theory of dynamical Coulomb blockade. Our findings relate the lack of some symmetries among the Onsager matrix coefficients with an enhancement of the efficiency at maximum power and the occurrence of the heat rectification phenomenon.

We derive the frequency-resolved heat current expression in the linear-response regime for a setup composed of a reservoir, an interacting central site, and a tunneling barrier under the action of a time-dependent electrical signal. We exploit the frequency parity properties of response functions to obtain the heat current expression for interacting quantum conductors. Importantly, the corresponding heat formula, valid for arbitrary ac frequencies, can describe photon-assisted heat transport. In particular, we analyze the heat transfer for an interacting multilevel conductor (a carbon nanotube quantum dot) coupled to a single reservoir. We show that the electrothermal admittance can reverse its sign by properly tuning the ac frequency.

We investigate a Mach-Zehnder interferometer fed by two time-dependently driven single-particle sources, one of them placed in front of the interferometer, the other in the centre of one of the arms. As long as the two sources are operated independently, the signal at the output of the interferometer shows an interference pattern, which we analyse in the spectral current, in the charge and energy currents, as well as in the charge current noise. The synchronisation of the two sources in this specifically designed setup allows for collisions and absorptions of particles at different points of the interferometer, which have a strong impact on the detected signals. It introduces further relevant time-scales and can even lead to a full suppression of the interference in some of the discussed quantities. The complementary interpretations of this phenomenon in terms of spectral properties and tuneable two-particle effects (absorptions and quantum exchange effects) are put forward in this article.

We investigate the role of chirality on the performance of a Maxwell demon implemented in a quantum Hall bar with a localized impurity. Within a stochastic thermodynamics description we investigate the ability of such a demon to drive a current against a bias. We show that the ability of the demon to perform is directly related to its ability to extract information from the system. The key features of the proposed Maxwell demon are the topological properties of the quantum Hall system. The asymmetry of the electronic interactions felt at the localized state when the magnetic field is reversed joined to the fact that we consider energy dependent (and asymmetric) tunneling barriers that connect such state with the Hall edge modes allow the demon to properly work.PACS numbers: 74.50.+r, 72.15.Qm, 73.63.Kv Introduction.-Since J. Clerk Maxwell envisioned in a gedanken experiment the possibility of an entity, an intelligent agent (a demon to Lord Kelvin) capable of separating warm and cold particles of a gas without performing work apparently violating the second law of thermodynamics, the idea attracted plenty of theoretical attention [1]. The apparent paradox was addressed on a basis in which information and entropy must be related [2]. Information is then, a physical magnitude and it fulfills physical laws [3]. Erasing information implies energy dissipation [4][5][6] that compensates the entropy reduction suffered by a system in the presence of the demon and ensures the validity of the second thermodynamic law. Such information-to-energy conversion is regarded as the solution of the Maxwell demon paradox [3]. Nowadays Maxwell's demon is regarded as a feedback control mechanism to convert information into energy. Even though Maxwell's idea was enunciated as a gedanken experiment, present technologies have made possible to build it at small scales, for instance by using Brownian particles [7,8], single electrons [9] and lasers pulses [10]. However, demons for quantum systems [11] are hard to experimentally design and work and thus show a scarcer experimental activity due to technical difficulty of implementing a truly quantum demon [7,12] despite the possibility of improved performance [13]. It is worth mentioning that the great progress in the development of stochastic thermodynamics, has resulted in theoretical proposals for stochastic Maxwell demons [14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and finally in an experimental implementation of an autonomous Maxwell demon using coupled quantum dots [21]. A key ingredient for the performance of stochastic Maxwell demons is the breakdown of detailed balance conditions [16] as direct consequence of a feedback mechanism. The breakdown of such relations is usually achieved through an asymmetry in the system, e.g. in the tunneling barriers of quantum dot systems [16,17]. Breaking the local detailed balance (LDB) condition creates an imbalance between forward and backward pro-