No Arabic abstract
The excess work performed in a heat-engine process with given finite operation time tau is bounded by the thermodynamic length, which measures the distance during the relaxation along a path in the space of the thermodynamic state. Unfortunately, the thermodynamic length, as a guidance for the heat engine optimization, is beyond the experimental measurement. We propose to measure the thermodynamic length mathcal{L} through the extrapolation of finite-time measurements mathcal{L}(tau)=int_{0}^{tau}[P_{mathrm{ex}}(t)]^{1/2}dt via the excess power P_{mathrm{ex}}(t). The current proposal allows to measure the thermodynamic length for a single control parameter without requiring extra effort to find the optimal control scheme. We illustrate the measurement strategy via examples of the quantum harmonic oscillator with tuning frequency and the classical ideal gas with changing volume.
We study the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of a heat engine operating between two finite-sized reservoirs with well-defined temperatures. Within the linear response regime, it is discovered that there exists a power-efficiency trade-off depending on the ratio of heat capacities ($gamma$) of the reservoirs for the engine; the uniform temperature of the two reservoirs at final time $tau$ is bounded from below by the entropy production $sigma_{mathrm{min}}propto1/tau$. We further obtain a universal efficiency at maximum power of the engine for arbitrary $gamma$. Our findings can be used to develop an optimization scenario for thermodynamic cycles with finite-sized reservoirs in practice.
We investigate a thermodynamic arrow associated with quantum projective measurements in terms of the Jensen-Shannon divergence between the probability distribution of energy change caused by the measurements and its time reversal counterpart. Two physical quantities appear to govern the asymptotic values of the time asymmetry. For an initial equilibrium ensemble prepared at a high temperature, the energy fluctuations determine the convergence of the time asymmetry approaching zero. At low temperatures, finite survival probability of the ground state limits the time asymmetry to be less than $ln 2$. We illustrate our results for a concrete system and discuss the fixed point of the time asymmetry in the limit of infinitely repeated projections.
Stability is an important property of small thermal machines with fluctuating power output. We here consider a finite-time quantum Carnot engine based on a degenerate multilevel system and study the influence of its finite Hilbert space structure on its stability. We optimize in particular its relative work fluctuations with respect to level degeneracy and level number. We find that its optimal performance may surpass those of nondegenerate two-level engines or harmonic oscillator motors. Our results show how to realize high-performance, high-stability cyclic quantum heat engines.
In finite-time quantum heat engines, some work is consumed to drive a working fluid accompanying coherence, which is called `friction. To understand the role of friction in quantum thermodynamics, we present a couple of finite-time quantum Otto cycles with two different baths: Agarwal versus Lindbladian. We solve them exactly and compare the performance of the Agarwal engine with that of the Lindbladian engine. In particular, we find remarkable and counterintuitive results that the performance of the Agarwal engine due to friction can be much higher than that in the quasistatic limit with the Otto efficiency, and the power of the Lindbladian engine can be nonzero in the short-time limit. Based on additional numerical calculations of these outcomes, we discuss possible origins of such differences between two engines and reveal them. Our results imply that even with an equilibrium bath, a nonequilibrium working fluid brings on the higher performance than what an equilibrium working fluid does.
We examine a quantum Otto engine with a harmonic working medium consisting of two particles to explore the use of wave function symmetry as an accessible resource. It is shown that the bosonic system displays enhanced performance when compared to two independent single particle engines, while the fermionic system displays reduced performance. To this end, we explore the trade-off between efficiency and power output and the parameter regimes under which the system functions as engine, refrigerator, or heater. Remarkably, the bosonic system operates under a wider parameter space both when operating as an engine and as a refrigerator.