Modern technologies could soon make it possible to investigate the operation cycles of quantum heat engines by counting the photons that are emitted and absorbed by their working systems. Using the quantum jump approach to open-system dynamics, we show that such experiments would give access to a set of observables that determine the trade-off between power and efficiency in finite-time engine cycles. By analyzing the single-jump statistics of thermodynamic fluxes such as heat and entropy production, we obtain a family of general bounds on the power of microscopic heat engines. Our new bounds unify two earlier results and admit a transparent physical interpretation in terms of single-photon measurements. In addition, these bounds confirm that driving-induced coherence leads to an increase in dissipation that suppresses the efficiency of slowly driven quantum engines in the weak-coupling regime. A nanoscale heat engine based on a superconducting qubit serves as an experimentally relevant example and a guiding paradigm for the development of our theory.
The present paper is aimed at studying the microscopic origin of the jump diffusion. Starting from the $N$-body Liouville equation and making only the assumption that molecular reorientation is overdamped, we derive and solve the new (hereafter generalized diffusion) equation. This is the most general equation which governs orientational relaxation of an equilibrium molecular ensemble in the hindered rotation limit and in the long time limit. The generalized diffusion equation is an extension of the small-angle diffusion equation beyond the impact approximation. We establish the conditions und…
We develop a geometric framework to describe the thermodynamics of microscopic heat engines driven by slow periodic temperature variations and modulations of a mechanical control parameter. Covering both the classical and the quantum regime, our approach reveals a universal trade-off relation between efficiency and power that follows solely from geometric arguments and holds for any thermodynamically consistent microdynamics. Focusing on Lindblad dynamics, we derive a second bound showing that coherence as a genuine quantum effect inevitably reduces the performance of slow engine cycles regard…
We investigate the aging dynamics of amorphous SiO2 via molecular dynamics simulations of a quench from a high temperature T_i to a lower temperature T_f. We obtain a microscopic picture of aging dynamics by analyzing single particle trajectories, identifying jump events when a particle escapes the cage formed by its neighbors, and by determining how these jumps depend on the waiting time t_w, the time elapsed since the temperature quench to T_f. We find that the only t_w-dependent microscopic quantity is the number of jumping particles per unit time, which decreases with age. Similar to previ…
Heat engines are fundamental physical objects to develop nonequilibrium thermodynamics. The thermodynamic performance of the heat engine is determined by the choice of cycle and time-dependence of parameters. Here, we propose a systematic numerical method to find a heat engine cycle to optimize some target functions. We apply the method to heat engines with slowly varying parameters and show that the method works well. Our numerical method is based on the genetic algorithm which is widely applied to various optimization problems.
Abstract The Curzon-Ahlborn (CA) efficiency, as the efficiency at the maximum power (EMP) of the endoreversible Carnot engine, has a significant impact on finite-time thermodynamics. However, the CA engine model is based on many assumptions. In the past few decades, although a lot of efforts have been made, a microscopic theory of the CA engine is still lacking. By adopting the method of the stochastic differential equation of energy, we formulate a microscopic theory of the CA engine realized with an underdamped Brownian particle in a class of non-harmonic potentials. This theory gives micros…
For cyclic heat engines operating in a finite cycle period, thermodynamic quantities have intercycle and intracycle correlations. By tuning the driving protocol appropriately, we can get the negative intercycle correlation to reduce the fluctuation of work through multiple cycles, which leads to the enhanced stability compared to the single-cycle operation. Taking the Otto engine with an overdamped Brownian particle as a working substance, we identify a scenario to get such enhanced stability by the intercycle correlation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the enhancement can be readily realize…
We model a microscopic heat engine as a particle hopping on a one-dimensional lattice in a periodic sawtooth potential, with or without load, assisted by the thermal kicks it gets from alternately placed hot and cold thermal baths. We find analytic expressions for current and rate of heat flow when the engine operates at steady state. Three regions are identified where the model acts either as a heat engine or as a refrigerator or as neither of the two. At quasistatic limit both efficiency of the engine and coefficient of performance of the refrigerator go to that for Carnot engine and Carnot …
Fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities become non-negligible and play an important role when the system size is small. We develop finite-time thermodynamics of fluctuations in microscopic heat engines whose environmental temperature and mechanical parameter are driven periodically in time. Within the slow-driving regime, this formalism universally holds in a coarse-grained time scale whose resolution is much longer than the correlation time of the fluctuations, and is shown to be consistent with the relation analogous to the fluctuation-dissipation relation. Employing a geometric argument, a…
We study the equivalence between the recently proposed finite environment quantum jump model and a master equation approach. We derive microscopically the master equation for a qubit coupled to a finite bosonic environment and show that the master equation is equivalent with the finite environment quantum jump model. We analytically show that both the methods produce the same moments of work when the work is defined through the two-measurement protocol excluding the interaction energy. However, when compared to the work moments computed using the power operator approach, we find a difference i…
We construct a microscopic model of low-dissipation engines by driving a Brownian particle in a time-dependent harmonic potential. Shortcuts to adiabaticity and shortcuts to isothermality are introduced to realize the adiabatic and isothermal branches in a thermodynamic cycle, respectively. We derive an analytical expression of the efficiency at maximum power for this kind of engines. This expression satisfies the universal law of efficiency at maximum power up to the second order of the Carnot efficiency. We also analyze the issue of power at any given efficiency for general low-dissipation e…
The heat engine, a machine that extracts useful work from thermal sources, is one of the basic theoretical constructs and fundamental applications of classical thermodynamics. The classical description of a heat engine does not include coherence in its microscopic degrees of freedom. By contrast, a quantum heat engine might possess coherence between its internal states. Although the Carnot efficiency cannot be surpassed, and coherence can be performance degrading in certain conditions, it was recently predicted that even when using only thermal resources, internal coherence can enable a quantu…
A universal large $\mathcal{N}$ theory of nonequilibrium fluctuations emerges in the limit of fast jump rates and large occupancies. We use this theory to derive a set of coarse grained thermodynamic uncertainty relations (TUR) -- one of them being an activity bound. Importantly, the activity serves as a tighter bound for the entropy production in 1D systems. These results are particularly useful in the many-body regime, where typically a coarse grained approach is required to handle the large microscopic state space.
We analytically and numerically study a fourth order PDE modeling rough crystal surface diffusion on the macroscopic level. We discuss existence of solutions globally in time and long time dynamics for the PDE model. The PDE, originally derived by the second author, is the continuum limit of a microscopic model of the surface dynamics, given by a Markov jump process with Metropolis type transition rates. We outline the convergence argument, which depends on a simplifying assumption on the local equilibrium measure that is valid in the high temperature regime. We provide numerical evidence for …
We present a microscopic Hamiltonian framework to develop Maxwell demon like engine. Our model consists of a equilibrium thermal bath and a non-equilibrium bath; latter generated by driving with an external stationary, Gaussian noise. The engine we develop, can be considered as a device to extract work by modifying internal fluctuations. Our theoretical analysis focusses on finding the essential ingredients necessary for generating fluctuation induced transport under non-equilibrium condition. An important outcome of our model is that the net motion occurs when the non-linear bath is modulated…
Microscopic thermal machines that are of the dimensions of around few hundred nanometers have been the subject of intense study over the last two decades. Recently, it has been shown that the efficiency of such thermal engines can be enhanced by using active Ornstein-Uhlenbeck particles (AOUP). In this work, we numerically study the behaviour of tiny engines and refrigerators that use an active run-and-tumble particle (RTP) as the working system. We find that the results for the engine mode are in sharp contrast with those of engines using AOUP, thus showing that the nature of activity has a s…
Microscopic heat engines are microscale systems that convert energy flows between heat reservoirs into work or systematic motion. We have experimentally realized a minimal microscopic heat engine. It consists of a colloidal Brownian particle optically trapped in an elliptical potential well and simultaneously coupled to two heat baths at different temperatures acting along perpendicular directions. For a generic arrangement of the principal directions of the baths and the potential, the symmetry of the system is broken, such that the heat flow drives a systematic gyrating motion of the particl…
The efficiency of microscopic heat engines in a thermally heterogenous environment is considered. We show that, as a consequence of the recently discovered entropic anomaly, quasi-static engines, whose efficiency is maximal in a fluid at uniform temperature, have in fact vanishing efficiency in presence of temperature gradients. For slow cycles the efficiency falls off as the inverse of the period. The maximum efficiency is reached at a finite value of the cycle period that is inversely proportional to the square root of the gradient intensity. The relative loss in maximal efficiency with resp…
We show that uncorrelated Gaussian noise, despite its paradigmatic association with thermal equilibrium, can drive a system out of equilibrium and can serve as a resource from which work can be extracted. We consider an overdamped particle in a periodic potential with an internal degree of freedom and a state-dependent friction, coupled to an equilibrium bath. Applying additional Gaussian white noise drives the system into a non-equilibrium steady state and causes a finite current if the potential is spatially asymmetric. We calculate the current explicitly in the three complementary limits. S…
The constraint relation for efficiency and power is crucial to design optimal heat engines operating within finite time. We find a universal constraint between efficiency and output power for heat engines operating in the low-dissipation regime. Such constraint is validated with an example of Carnot-like engine. Its microscopic dynamics is governed by the master equation. Based on the master equation, we connect the microscopic coupling strengths to the generic parameters in the phenomenological model. We find the usual assumption of low-dissipation is achieved when the coupling to thermal env…
The topic of microscopic heat engine has undergone intensive research in recent years. Microscopic heat engines can exploit thermal as well as active fluctuations to extract thermodynamic work. We investigate the properties of a microscopic Stirling's engine that uses an active (self-propelling) particle as a working substance, in contact with two thermal baths. It is shown that the presence of activity leads to an enhanced performance of the engine. The efficiency can be improved by increasing the activity strength for all cycle time, including the non-quasistatic regime. We verify that the a…
There exist two formulations for quantum heat engine that models an energy transfer between two microscopic systems. One is semi-classical scenario, and the other is full quantum scenario. The former is formulated as a unitary evolution for the internal system, and is adopted by the community of statistical mechanics. In the latter, the whole process is formulated as unitary, and is adopted by the community of quantum information. This paper proposes a model for quantum heat engine that transfers energy from a collection of microscopic systems to a macroscopic system like a fuel cell. In such …
The Carnot cycle imposes a fundamental upper limit to the efficiency of a macroscopic motor operating between two thermal baths. However, this bound needs to be reinterpreted at microscopic scales, where molecular bio-motors and some artificial micro-engines operate. As described by stochastic thermodynamics, energy transfers in microscopic systems are random and thermal fluctuations induce transient decreases of entropy, allowing for possible violations of the Carnot limit. Despite its potential relevance for the development of a thermodynamics of small systems, an experimental study of micro…
We investigate a microscopic motor based on an externally controlled two-level system. One cycle of the motor operation consists of two strokes. Within each stroke, the two-level system is in contact with a given thermal bath and its energy levels are driven with a constant rate. The time evolution of the occupation probabilities of the two states are controlled by one rate equation and represent the system's response with respect to the external driving. We give the exact solution of the rate equation for the limit cycle and discuss the emerging thermodynamics: the work done on the environmen…
An unknown quantum state of a single system cannot be discovered, as a measured system is reprepare: it jumps into an eigenstate of the measured observable. This impossibility of finding the quantum state and other symptoms usually blamed on wave-packet collapse follow (as was recently demonstrated for pure states of measured systems) from unitarity (which does not, however, allow for a literal collapse) and from the repeatability of measurements: Continuous unitary evolution and repeatability suffice to establish the discreteness that underlies quantum jumps. Here we consider mixed states of …
We study microscopic engines that use a single active particle as their "working medium". Part of the energy required to drive the directed motion of the particle can be recovered as work, even at constant temperature. A wide class of synthetic active particles can be captured by schematically accounting for the chemical degrees of freedom that power the directed motion without having to resolve the exact microscopic mechanism. We derive analytical results for the quasi-static thermodynamic efficiency, i.e., the fraction of available chemical energy that can be recovered as mechanical work. Wh…
We consider from a microscopic perspective large deviation properties of several stochastic interacting particle systems, using their mapping to integrable quantum spin systems. A brief review of recent work is given and several new results are presented: (i) For the general disordered symmectric exclusion process (SEP) on some finite lattice conditioned on no jumps into some absorbing sublattice and with initial Bernoulli product measure with density $ρ$ we prove that the probability $S_ρ(t)$ of no absorption event up to microscopic time $t$ can be expressed in terms of the generating functio…
