The possibility of utilizing quantum effects to enhance the performance of quantum heat engines has been an active topic of research, but how to enhance the performance by optimizing the engine parameters needs to be further studied. In this study, the temperature difference and dissipation modes affecting the performance of a three-level quantum heat engine were analyzed using an orthogonal test. The results indicated that the dissipation mode dominated the performance of the quantum heat engine. The quantum heat engine performs best when there is only resonance and no detuning; however, when detuning exists, a lower resonance can improve the efficiency by reducing energy losses. Regarding the temperature difference, the best performance was achieved at medium temperature difference owing to the decreasing heat leakage. Finally, the quantum friction caused by the detuning could make the maximal efficiency lower than the Carnot efficiency.
For heat engines working between two heat baths, functionality is often conditioned on a set of fixed constraints such as given internal structure of the engine and given temperatures for the baths. It is, however, important to devise heat engines which can function adaptively, in particular when the engine is a quantum system and the baths are subject to fluctuations. Here we study a model for an adaptive quantum heat engine whose heat baths can have variable temperatures. We obtain conditions under which such an engine can still operate. Moreover, we propose an enhancement of the heat engine…
We introduce a new quantum heat engine, in which the working medium is a quantum system with a discrete level and a continuum. Net work done by this engine is calculated and discussed. The results show that this quantum heat engine behaves like the two-level quantum heat engine in both the high-temperature and the low-temperature limits, but it operates differently in temperatures between them. The efficiency of this quantum heat engine is also presented and discussed.
In this work, we introduce the concept of the fractional quantum heat engine. We examine the space-fractional quantum Szilard heat engine as an example to show that the space-fractional quantum heat engines can produce higher efficiency than the conventional quantum heat engines.
We analyze an autonomous thermoelectric engine composed of two superconducting qubits coupled to separate heat baths and connected by a Josephson junction. Work and heat are process quantities and not observables of the engine quantum system, but their rates can be derived from the steady state expectation value of appropriate system observables and their fluctuations are given by correlation functions determined with the GKLS master equation and quantum regression theorem. The correlation functions also reveal a cyclical, dynamical transfer of energy - the strokes of the engine - hiding under…
In order to describe quantum heat engines, here we systematically study isothermal and isochoric processes for quantum thermodynamic cycles. Based on these results the quantum versions of both the Carnot heat engine and the Otto heat engine are defined without ambiguities. We also study the properties of quantum Carnot and Otto heat engines in comparison with their classical counterparts. Relations and mappings between these two quantum heat engines are also investigated by considering their respective quantum thermodynamic processes. In addition, we discuss the role of Maxwell's demon in quan…
Certain solutions of Einstein's equations in anti-de Sitter spacetime can be engineered, using extended gravitational thermodynamics, to yield `holographic heat engines', devices that turn heat into useful mechanical work. On the other hand, there are constructions (both experimental and theoretical) where a series of operations is performed on a small quantum system, defining what are known as `quantum heat engines'. We propose that certain holographic heat engines can be considered models of quantum heat engines, and the possible fruitfulness of this connection is discussed. Motivated by fea…
A heat engine is a machine which uses the temperature difference between a hot and a cold reservoir to extract work. Here both reservoirs are quantum systems and a heat engine is described by a unitary transformation which decreases the average energy of the bipartite system. On the molecular scale, the ability of implementing such a unitary heat engine is closely connected to the ability of performing logical operations and classical computing. This is shown by several examples: (1) The most elementary heat engine is a SWAP-gate acting on 1 hot and 1 cold two-level systems with different ener…
With a class of quantum heat engines which consists of two-energy-eigenstate systems undergoing, respectively, quantum adiabatic processes and energy exchanges with heat baths at different stages of a cycle, we are able to clarify some important aspects of the second law of thermodynamics. The quantum heat engines also offer a practical way, as an alternative to Szilard's engine, to physically realise Maxwell's daemon. While respecting the second law on the average, they are also capable of extracting more work from the heat baths than is otherwise possible in thermal equilibrium.
We introduce a class of quantum heat engines which consists of two-energy-eigenstate systems, the simplest of quantum mechanical systems, undergoing quantum adiabatic processes and energy exchanges with heat baths, respectively, at different stages of a cycle. Armed with this class of heat engines and some interpretation of heat transferred and work performed at the quantum level, we are able to clarify some important aspects of the second law of thermodynamics. In particular, it is not sufficient to have the heat source hotter than the sink, but there must be a minimum temperature difference …
A quantum model of a heat engine resembling the Otto cycle is employed to explore strategies to suppress frictional losses. These losses are caused by the inability of the engine's working medium to follow adiabatically the change in the Hamiltonian during the expansion and compression stages. By adding external noise to the engine, frictional losses can be suppressed.
By using a laser and maser in tandem, it is possible to obtain laser action in the hot exhaust gases involved in heat engine operation. Such a "quantum afterburner" involves the internal quantum states of working gas atoms or molecules as well as the techniques of cavity quantum electrodynamics and is therefore in the domain of quantum thermodynamics. As an example, it is shown that Otto cycle engine performance can be improved beyond that of the "ideal" Otto heat engine.
We construct the smallest possible self contained heat engines; one composed of only two qubits, the other of only a single qutrit. The engines are self-contained as they do not require external sources of work and/or control. They are able to produce work which is used to continuously lift a weight. Despite the dimension of the engine being small, it is still able to operate at the Carnot efficiency.
Landauer's erasure principle is a cornerstone of thermodynamics and information theory. According to this principle, erasing information incurs a minimum energy cost. Recently, Vaccaro and Barnett [Proc. R. Soc {\bf 467}, 1770 (2011)] explored information erasure in the context of multiple conserved quantities and showed that the erasure cost can be solely in terms of spin angular momentum. As Landauer's erasure principle plays a fundamental role in heat engines, their result considerably widens the possible configurations that heat engines can have. Motivated by this, we propose here a novel …
We describe how electromagnetically induced transparency may be used to construct a non-traditional near-ideal quantum heat engine as constrained by the Second Law. The engine is pumped by a thermal reservoir that may be either hotter or colder than that of an exhaust reservoir, and also by a monochromatic laser. As output, it produces a bright narrow emission at line center of an otherwise absorbing transition.
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.
We investigate the quantum thermodynamic cycle of a quantum heat engine carrying out an Otto thermodynamic cycle. We use the thermal properties of a moving heat bath with relativistic velocity with respect to the cold bath. As a working medium, we use a two-level system and a harmonic oscillator that interact with a moving heat bath and a static cold bath. In the current work, the quantum heat engine is studied in the high and low temperatures regime. Using quantum thermodynamics and the theory of open quantum system we obtain the total produced work, the efficiency and the efficiency at maxim…
We propose an autonomous quantum heat engine based on the thermally driven oscillation of a single electron shuttle. The electronic degree of freedom of this device acts as an internal dynamical controller which switches the interaction of the engine with the thermal baths. We show that in addition to energy flux through the thermal baths, a flux of energy is attributed to the controller and it affects the engine power.
Quantum thermodynamics studies quantum effects in thermal machines. But when is a heat engine, which cyclically interacts with external reservoirs that unavoidably destroy its quantum coherence, really quantum? We here use the Leggett-Garg inequality to assess the nonclassical properties of a single two-level Otto engine. We provide the complete phase diagram characterizing the quantumness of the engine as a function of its parameters and identify three distinct phases. We further derive an explicit expression for the transition temperature.
There exists a consistent thermodynamical formalism with canonical definition of local temperatures which allows to extend the Carnot bound also to non-equilibrium baths, like those discussed in the Letter
Quantum cycles in established heat engines can be modeled with various quantum systems as working substances. For example, a heat engine can be modeled with an infinite potential well as the working substance to determine the efficiency and work done. However, in this method, the relationship between the quantum observables and the physically measurable parameters i.e., the efficiency and work done is not well understood from the quantum mechanics approach. A detailed analysis is needed to link the thermodynamic variables (on which the efficiency and work done depends) with the uncertainty pri…
Established heat engines in quantum regime can be modeled with various quantum systems as working substances. For example, in the non-relativistic case, we can model the heat engine using infinite potential well as a working substance to evaluate the efficiency and work done of the engine. Here, we propose quantum heat engine with a relativistic particle confined in the one-dimensional potential well as working substance. The cycle comprises of two isothermal processes and two potential well processes of equal width, which forms the quantum counterpart of the known isochoric process in classic…
Recent theoretical and experimental studies in quantum heat engines show that, in the quasi-static regime, it is possible to have higher efficiency than the limit imposed by Carnot, provided that engineered reservoirs are used. The quasi-static regime, however, is a strong limitation to the operation of heat engines, since infinitely long time is required to complete a cycle. In this paper we propose a two-level model as the working substance to perform a quantum Otto heat engine surrounded by a cold thermal reservoir and a squeezed hot thermal reservoir. Taking advantage of this model we show…
We suggest alternative quantum Otto engines, using heat bath algorithmic cooling with partner pairing algorithm instead of isochoric cooling. Liquid state nuclear magnetic resonance systems in one entropy sink are considered as working fluids. Then, the extractable work and thermal efficiency are analyzed in detail for four-stroke and two-stroke type of quantum Otto engines. The role of heat bath algorithmic cooling in these cycles is to use a single entropy sink instead of two. Also, this cooling algorithm increases the power of engines reducing the time required for one cycle.
The question of whether quantum coherence is a resource beneficial or detrimental to the performance of quantum heat engines has been thoroughly studied but remains undecided. To isolate the contribution of coherence, we analyze the performance of a purely coherence-driven quantum heat engine, a device that does not include any heat flow during the thermodynamic cycle. The engine is powered by the coherence of a multiqubit system, where each qubit is charged via interaction with a coherence bath using the Jaynes-Cummings model. We demonstrate that optimal coherence charging and hence extractab…
The aim of this paper is to determine lost works in a molecular engine and compare results with macro (classical) heat engines. Firstly, irreversible thermodynamics are reviewed for macro and molecular cycles. Secondly, irreversible thermodynamics approaches are applied for a quantum heat engine with -1/2 spin system. Finally, lost works are determined for considered system and results show that macro and molecular heat engines obey same limitations. Moreover, a quantum thermodynamic approach is suggested in order to explain the results previously obtained from an atomic viewpoint.
One of the fundamental questions in quantum thermodynamics concerns the decomposition of energetic changes into heat and work. Contrary to classical engines, the entropy change of the piston cannot be neglected in the quantum domain. As a consequence, different concepts of work arise, depending on the desired task and the implied capabilities of the agent using the work generated by the engine. Each work quantifier---from ergotropy to non-equilibrium free energy---has well defined operational interpretations. We analyse these work quantifiers for a heat-pumped three-level maser and derive the …
Heat radiation and near-field radiative heat transfer can be strongly manipulated by adjusting geometrical shapes, optical properties, or the relative positions of the objects involved. Typically these objects are considered as embedded in vacuum. By applying the methods of fluctuational electrodynamics, we derive general closed-form expressions for heat radiation and heat transfer in a system of $N$ arbitrary objects embedded in a passive non-absorbing background medium. Taking into account the principle of reciprocity, we explicitly prove the symmetry and positivity of transfer in any such s…
Coherent interconversion between optical and mechanical excitations in an optomechanical cavity can be used to engineer a quantum heat engine. This heat engine is based on an Otto cycle between a cold photonic reservoir and a hot phononic reservoir [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 150602 (2014)]. Building on our previous work, we (i) develop a detailed theoretical analysis of the work and the efficiency of the engine, and (ii) perform an investigation of the quantum thermodynamics underlying this scheme. In particular, we analyze the thermodynamic performance in both the dressed polariton picture and th…
Following the rising interest in quantum information science, the extension of a heat engine to the quantum regime by exploring microscopic quantum systems has seen a boom of interest in the last decade. Although quantum coherence in the quantum system of the working medium has been investigated to play a nontrivial role, a complete understanding of the intrinsic quantum advantage of quantum heat engines remains elusive. We experimentally demonstrate that the quantum correlation between the working medium and the thermal bath is critical for the quantum advantage of a quantum Szilard engine, w…
The working substance fueling a quantum heat engine may contain coherence in its energy basis, depending on the dynamics of the engine cycle. In some models of quantum Otto heat engines, energy coherence has been associated with entropy production and quantum friction. We considered a quantum Otto heat engine operating at finite time. Coherence is generated and the working substance does not reach thermal equilibrium after interacting with the hot heat reservoir, leaving the working substance in a state with residual energy coherence. We observe an interference-like effect between the residual…
We propose a quantum-enhanced heat engine with entanglement. The key feature of our scheme is superabsorption, which facilitates enhanced energy absorption by entangled qubits. Whereas a conventional engine with $N$ separable qubits provides power with a scaling of $P = Θ(N)$, our engine uses superabsorption to provide power with a quantum scaling of $P = Θ(N^2)$. This quantum heat engine also exhibits a scaling advantage over classical ones composed of $N$-particle Langevin systems. Our work elucidates the quantum properties allowing for the enhancement of performance.
We realize a heat engine using a single electron spin as a working medium. The spin pertains to the valence electron of a trapped $^{40}$Ca$^+$ ion, and heat reservoirs are emulated by controlling the spin polarization via optical pumping. The engine is coupled to the ion's harmonic-oscillator degree of freedom via spin-dependent optical forces. The oscillator stores the work produced by the heat engine and therefore acts as a flywheel. We characterize the state of the flywheel by reconstructing the Husimi $\mathcal{Q}$ function of the oscillator after different engine runtimes. This allows us…
In this paper, we study the role and relevance of the cost for an invariant-based shortcut to adiabaticity enabled qubit heat engine operates in a quantum Otto cycle. We consider a qubit heat engine with Landau-Zener Hamiltonian and improve its performance using the Lewis-Riesenfeld invariant-based shortcut to adiabaticity method. Addressing the importance of cost for better performance, the paper explores its relationship with the work and efficiency of the heat engine. We analyze the cost variation with the time duration of non-adiabatic unitary processes involved in the heat engine cycle. T…
We construct an entangled quantum Otto engine based on spin-1/2 systems undergoing Dzyaloshinski-Moriya (DM) interaction within a varying magnetic field. We investigate the influence of the DM interaction on basic thermodynamic quantities, including heat transfer, work done, and efficiency and find that the DM interaction importantly influences the engine's thermodynamics. We obtain an expression for engine efficiency, finding it to yield the same efficiency for antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic coupling. A new upper bound, nontrivially consistent with the second law of thermodynamics, is de…
We investigate how quantum signatures can emerge in a single atom heat engine consisting of an atom confined in a tapered trap and subject to hot and cold thermal reservoirs. A similar system was realized experimentally in Ref.[1]. We model such a system using a quadratic optomechanical model and identify an effective Otto cycle in the system's dynamics. We compare the engine's performance in the quantum and classical regimes by evaluating the power dissipated. We find that lowering the temperature is insufficient to make the single atom engine of Ref.[1] a genuine quantum-enhanced heat engine…
Heat engines used to output useful work have important practical significance, which, in general, operate between heat baths of infinite size and constant temperature. In this paper we study the efficiency of a heat engine operating between two finite-size heat sources with initial temperature differences. The total output work of such heat engine is limited due to the finite heat capacity of the sources. We investigate the effects of different heat capacity characteristics of the sources on the heat engine's efficiency at maximum work (EMW) in the quasi-static limit. In addition, we study the…
Quantum heat engines are expected to outperform the classical counterparts due to quantum coherences involved. Here we experimentally execute a single-ion quantum heat engine and demonstrate, for the first time, the dynamics and the enhanced performance of the heat engine originating from the Liouvillian exceptional points (LEPs). In addition to the topological effects related to LEPs, we focus on thermodynamic effects, which can be understood by the Landau-Zener-Stuckelberg process under decoherence. We witness a positive net work from the quantum heat engine if the heat engine cycle dynamica…
We propose and analyze the theoretical model for a two-stroke quantum heat engine with one of the heat baths replaced by a non-selective quantum measurement. We show that the engine's invariant reference state depends on whether the cycle is monitored or unmonitored via diagnostic measurements to determine the engine's work output. We explore in detail the average work output and fluctuations of the proposed heat engine for the monitored and unmonitored cases. We also identify unitary work strokes for which the invariant states can support coherences in the energy basis leading to differing pr…
We propose and analyze the use of hybrid microwave cavities as quantum heat engines. A possible realization consists of two macroscopically separated quantum dot conductors coupled capacitively to the fundamental mode of a microwave cavity. We demonstrate that an electrical current can be induced in one conductor through cavity-mediated processes by heating up the other conductor. The heat engine can reach Carnot efficiency with optimal conversion of heat to work. When the system delivers the maximum power, the efficiency can be a large fraction of the Carnot efficiency. The heat engine functi…
The impacts of quantum coherence on nonequilibrium thermodynamics become observable by dividing the heat and work into the conventional diagonal part and the other part relaying on the superpositions and the time derivative of Hamiltonian. Specializing to exactly-solvable dynamics of Larmor precession, we build a quantum Otto heat engine employing magnetic-driven atomic rotations. The coherence induced by the population transition guarantees the positive work output when the control protocol is time dependent. The time-dependent control of a quantum heat engine implements the correspondence be…
We report an experimental demonstration of a coupled-mode heat engine in a two-membrane-in-the-middle cavity optomechanical system. The normal mode of the cavity-mediated strongly coupled nanoresonators is utilized as the working medium and an Otto cycle is realized by extracting work between two phononic thermal reservoirs. The heat engine performance is characterized in both normal mode and bare mode pictures, which reveals that the correlation of two membranes plays a significant role during the thermodynamic cycle. Moreover, a straight-twin nanomechanical engine is implemented by engineeri…
We evaluate Renyi entropy flows from generic quantum heat engines (QHE) to a weakly-coupled probe environment kept in thermal equilibrium. We show that the flows are determined not only by heat flow but also by a quantum coherent flow that can be separately measured in experiment apart from the heat flow measurement. The same pertains to Shanon entropy flow. This appeals for a revision of the concept of entropy flows in quantum nonequlibrium thermodynamics.
We study the stochastic energetic exchanges in quantum heat engines. Due to microreversibility, these obey a fluctuation relation, called the heat engine fluctuation relation, which implies the Carnot bound: no machine can have an efficiency larger than Carnot's efficiency. The stochastic thermodynamics of a quantum heat engine (including the joint statistics of heat and work and the statistics of efficiency) is illustrated by means of an optimal two-qubit heat engine, where each qubit is coupled to a thermal bath and a two-qubit gate determines energy exchanges between the two qubits. We disc…
Optical pump-probe signals can be viewed as work done by the matter while transferring the energy between two coherent baths (from pump to probe). In thermodynamics a heat engine, such as laser, is a device which performs similar work but operating between two thermal baths. We propose an "incoherent" control procedure for the optical signals using the physics of quantum heat engine. By combining a coherent laser excitation of electronic excited state of molecule with thermal relaxation we introduce an effective thermal bath treating stimulated emission of probe photons as work performed by th…
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…
We consider quantum heat engines that operate between nonequilibrium stationary reservoirs. We evaluate their maximum efficiency from the positivity of the entropy production and show that it can be expressed in terms of an effective temperature that depends on the nature of the reservoirs. We further compute the efficiency at maximum power for different kinds of engineered reservoirs and derive a nonequilibrium generalization of the Clausius statement of the second law.
