Refrigerators use a thermodynamic cycle to move thermal energy from a cold reservoir to a hot one. Implementing this operation principle with mesoscopic components has recently emerged as a promising strategy to control heat currents in micro and nano systems for quantum technological applications. Here, we combine concepts from stochastic and quantum thermodynamics with advanced methods of optimal control theory to develop a universal optimization scheme for such small-scale refrigerators. Covering both the classical and the quantum regime, our theoretical framework provides a rigorous procedure to determine the periodic driving protocols that maximize either cooling power or efficiency. As a main technical tool, we decompose the cooling cycle into two strokes, which can be optimized one by one. In the regimes of slow or fast driving, we show how this procedure can be simplified significantly by invoking suitable approximations. To demonstrate the practical viability of our scheme, we determine the exact optimal driving protocols for a quantum microcooler, which can be realized experimentally with current technology. Our work provides a powerful tool to develop optimal design strategies for engineered cooling devices and it creates a versatile framework for theoretical investigations exploring the fundamental performance limits of mesoscopic thermal machines. :1903.10845v1 [cond-mat.mes-hall] arXiv
Thermodynamic geometry provides a physically transparent framework to describe thermodynamic processes in meso- and micro-scale systems that are driven by slow variations of external control parameters. Focusing on periodic driving for thermal machines, we extend this framework to ideal quantum gases. To this end, we show that the standard approach of equilibrium physics, where a grand-canonical ensemble is used to model a canonical one by fixing the mean particle number through the chemical potential, can be extended to the slow driving regime in a thermodynamically consistent way. As a key application of our theory, we use a Lindblad-type quantum master equation to work out a dynamical model of a quantum many-body engine using a harmonically trapped Bose-gas. Our results provide a geometric picture of the BEC-induced power enhancement that was previously predicted for this type of engine on the basis of an endoreversible model [New J. Phys. 24, 025001 (2022)]. Using an earlier derived universal trade-off relation between power and efficiency as a benchmark, we further show that the Bose-gas engine can deliver significantly more power at given efficiency than an equally large collection of single-body engines. Our work paves the way for a more general thermodynamic framework that makes it possible to systematically assess the impact of quantum many-body effects on the performance of thermal machines.
Bose-Einstein condensation happens as a gas of bosons is cooled below its transition temperature, and the ground state becomes macroscopically occupied. The phase transition occurs in the thermodynamic limit of many particles. However, recent experimental progress has made it possible to assemble quantum many-body systems from bottom up, for example, by adding single atoms to an optical lattice one at a time. Here, we show how one can predict the condensation temperature of a Bose gas from the energy fluctuations of a small number of bosons. To this end, we make use of recent advances in Lee-Yang theories of phase transitions, which allow us to determine the zeros and the poles of the partition function in the complex plane of the inverse temperature from the high cumulants of the energy fluctuations. By increasing the number of bosons in the trapping potential, we can predict the convergence point of the partition function zeros in the thermodynamic limit, where they reach the inverse critical temperature on the real axis. Using less than 100 bosons, we can estimate the condensation temperature for a Bose gas in a harmonic potential in two and three dimensions, and we also find that there is no phase transition in one dimension as one would expect.
We study the role of correlation in mechanisms of energy exchange between an interacting bipartite quantum system and its environment by decomposing the energy of the system to local and correlation-related contributions. When the system Hamiltonian is time independent, no external work is performed. In this case, energy exchange between the system and its environment occurs only due to the change in the state of the system. We investigate the possibility of a special case where the energy exchange with the environment occurs exclusively due to changes in the correlation between the constituent parts of the bipartite system, while their local energies remain constant. We find sufficient conditions for preserving local energies. It is proven that under these conditions and within the Gorini-Kossakowski-Lindblad-Sudarshan dynamics this scenario is not possible for all initial states of the bipartite system. Nevertheless, since the sufficient conditions can be too strong, it is still possible to find special cases for which the local energies remain unchanged during the associated evolution and the whole energy exchange is only due to the change in the correlation energy. We illustrate our results with an example.
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