Attaining Carnot efficiency with quantum and nanoscale heat engines

Bera, Mohit Lal; Lewenstein, Maciej; Bera, Manabendra Nath

doi:10.1038/s41534-021-00366-6

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…These intrinsic limitations hindered so far the implementation of superconducting thermoelectric devices in quantum technologies, such as radiation detectors, switches, memories, and engines. Indeed, despite great theoretical efforts [32][33][34], the experimental realization of efficient solid-state heat engines is still limited to InAs/InP quantumdots [35], molecular systems [36] and silicon tunnel transistors [37].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bipolar Thermoelectric Josephson Engine

Germanese¹,

Paolucci²,

Marchegiani³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bipolar Thermoelectric Josephson Engine

Germanese¹,

Paolucci²,

Marchegiani³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…The constant increase of control that experiments exert on small-scale quantum devices has led to a growing interest in heat engines operating in the quantum regime, potentially granting quantum advantages over their classical counterparts [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. In contrast, quantum effects hinder the miniaturization of classical devices by introducing new sources of errors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermodynamic state convertibility is determined by qubit cooling and heating

Theurer,

Zanoni,

Maria Scandolo

et al. 2023

New J. Phys.

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Thermodynamics plays an important role both in the foundations of physics and in technological applications. An operational perspective adopted in recent years is to formulate it as a quantum resource theory. At the core of this theory is the interconversion between athermality states, i.e., states out of thermal equilibrium. Here, we solve the question of how athermality can be used to heat and cool other quantum systems that are initially at thermal equilibrium. We then show that the convertibility between quasi-classical resources (resources that do not exhibit coherence between different energy eigenstates) is fully characterized by their ability to cool and heat qubits, i.e., by two of the most fundamental thermodynamical tasks on the simplest quantum systems.

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“…[6][7][8], see also [9][10][11][12]). The resource theory of quantum thermodynamics was recently extended to deal with quantum and nanoscale engines made up of a finite or a small number of quantum particles, and two baths at different temperatures [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resource Theory of Heat and Work with Non-commuting Charges

Khanian

Bera

Riera

et al. 2022

Ann. Henri Poincaré

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We consider a theory of quantum thermodynamics with multiple conserved quantities (or charges). To this end, we generalize the seminal results of Sparaciari et al. (Phys. Rev. A 96:052112, 2017) to the case of multiple, in general non-commuting charges, for which we formulate a resource theory of thermodynamics of asymptotically many non-interacting systems. To every state we associate the vector of its expected charge values and its entropy, forming the phase diagram of the system. Our fundamental result is the Asymptotic Equivalence Theorem, which allows us to identify the equivalence classes of states under asymptotic approximately charge-conserving unitaries with the points of the phase diagram. Using the phase diagram of a system and its bath, we analyze the first and the second laws of thermodynamics. In particular, we show that to attain the second law, an asymptotically large bath is necessary. In the case that the bath is composed of several identical copies of the same elementary bath, we quantify exactly how large the bath has to be to permit a specified work transformation of a given system, in terms of the number of copies of the “elementary bath” systems per work system (bath rate). If the bath is relatively small, we show that the analysis requires an extended phase diagram exhibiting negative entropies. This corresponds to the purely quantum effect that at the end of the process, system and bath are entangled, thus permitting classically impossible transformations (unless the bath is enlarged). For a large bath, or many copies of the same elementary bath, system and bath may be left uncorrelated and we show that the optimal bath rate, as a function of how tightly the second law is attained, can be expressed in terms of the heat capacity of the bath. Our approach solves a problem from earlier investigations about how to store the different charges under optimal work extraction protocols in physically separate batteries.

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Attaining Carnot efficiency with quantum and nanoscale heat engines

Cited by 12 publications

References 35 publications

Bipolar Thermoelectric Josephson Engine

Bipolar Thermoelectric Josephson Engine

Thermodynamic state convertibility is determined by qubit cooling and heating

Resource Theory of Heat and Work with Non-commuting Charges

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