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We discuss a quantum thermal machine that generates power from a thermally driven double quantum dot coupled to normal and superconducting reservoirs. Energy exchange between the dots is mediated by electronelectron interactions. We can distinguish three main mechanisms within the device operation modes. In the Andreev tunneling regime, energy flows in the presence of coherent superposition of zero-and two-particle states. Despite the intrinsic electron-hole symmetry of Andreev processes, we find that the heat engine efficiency increases with increasing coupling to the superconducting reservoir. The second mechanism occurs in the regime of quasiparticle transport. Here we obtain large efficiencies due to the presence of the superconducting gap and the strong energy dependence of the electronic density of states around the gap edges. Finally, in the third regime there exists a competition between Andreev processes and quasiparticle tunneling. Altogether, our results emphasize the importance of both pair tunneling and structured band spectrum for an accurate characterization of the heat engine properties in normal-superconducting coupled dot systems.

We investigate the Kondo effect in a double-quantum-dot which is capacitively coupled to a charge-Qubit. It is shown that due to this capacitive coupling, the bare inter-dot repulsive interaction in the double-quantum-dot is effectively reduced and eventually changed to an attractive interaction for strong couplings between the double-quantum-dot and the Qubit. By deriving the low-energy effective Hamiltonian of the system, we find that the low energy dynamics of the system corresponding to these two positive or negative effective interaction regimes can be described, respectively, by an isotropic orbital-Kondo or an anisotropic charge-Kondo Hamiltonian. Moreover, we study various thermodynamic and electronic transport properties of the system by using the numerical renormalization group method. arXiv:1806.06909v1 [cond-mat.str-el]