No Arabic abstract
Theoretical treatments of periodically-driven quantum thermal machines (PD-QTMs) are largely focused on the limit-cycle stage of operation characterized by a periodic state of the system. Yet, this regime is not immediately accessible for experimental verification. Here, we present a general thermodynamic framework that can handle the performance of PD-QTMs both before and during the limit-cycle stage of operation. It is achieved by observing that periodicity may break down at the ensemble average level, even in the limit-cycle phase. With this observation, and using conventional thermodynamic expressions for work and heat, we find that a complete description of the first law of thermodynamics for PD-QTMs requires a new contribution, which vanishes only in the limit-cycle phase under rather weak system-bath couplings. Significantly, this contribution is substantial at strong couplings even at limit cycle, thus largely affecting the behavior of the thermodynamic efficiency. We demonstrate our framework by simulating a quantum Otto engine building upon a driven resonant level model. Our results provide new insights towards a complete description of PD-QTMs, from turn-on to the limit-cycle stage and, particularly, shed light on the development of quantum thermodynamics at strong coupling.
We study a model of isothermal steady-state work-to-work converter, where a single quantum two-level system (TLS) driven by time-dependent periodic external fields acts as the working medium and is permanently put in contact with a thermal reservoir at fixed temperature $T$. By combining Short-Iterative Lanczos (SIL) method and analytic approaches, we study the converter performance in the linear response regime and in a wide range of driving frequencies, from weak to strong dissipation. We show that for our ideal quantum machine several parameter ranges exist where a violation of Thermodynamics Uncertainty Relations (TUR) occurs. We find the violation to depend on the driving frequency and on the dissipation strength, and we trace it back to the degree of coherence of the quantum converter. We eventually discuss the influence of other possible sources of violation, such as non-Markovian effects during the converter dynamics.
The availability of controllable macroscopic devices, which maintain quantum coherence over relatively long time intervals, for the first time allows an experimental realization of many effects previously considered only as Gedankenexperiments, such as the operation of quantum heat engines. The theoretical efficiency eta of quantum heat engines is restricted by the same Carnot boundary eta_C as for the classical ones: any deviations from quasistatic evolution suppressing eta below eta_C. Here we investigate an implementation of an analog of the Otto cycle in a tunable quantum coherent circuit and show that the specific source of inefficiency is the quantum squeezing of the thermal state due to the finite speed of compression/expansion of the system.
Quantum speed limit, furnishing a lower bound on the required time for the evolution of a quantum system through the state space, imposes an ultimate natural limitation to the dynamics of physical devices. Quantum absorption refrigerators, on the other hand, have attracted a great deal of attention in the last few years. In this article, we discuss the effects of quantum speed limit on the performance of a quantum absorption refrigerator. In particular, we show that there exists a trade-off relation between the steady cooling rate of the refrigerator and the minimum time taken to reach the steady state. Based on this, we define a figure of merit called bounding second order cooling rate and show that this scales linearly with the unitary interaction strength among the constituent qubits. We also study the increase of bounding second order cooling rate with the thermalization strength. We subsequently demonstrate that coherence in the initial three qubit system can significantly increase the bounding second order cooling rate. We study the efficiency of the refrigerator at maximum bounding second order cooling rate and, in a limiting case, we show that the efficiency at maximum bounding second order cooling rate is given by a simple formula reminiscent of the Curzon-Ahlborn relation.
As the dimensions of physical systems approach the nanoscale, the laws of thermodynamics must be reconsidered due to the increased importance of fluctuations and quantum effects. While the statistical mechanics of small classical systems is relatively well understood, the quantum case still poses challenges. Here we set up a formalism that allows to calculate the full probability distribution of energy exchanges between a periodically driven quantum system and a thermalized heat reservoir. The formalism combines Floquet theory with a generalized master equation approach. For a driven two-level system and in the long-time limit, we obtain a universal expression for the distribution, providing clear physical insight into the exchanged energy quanta. We illustrate our approach in two analytically solvable cases and discuss the differences in the corresponding distributions. Our predictions could be directly tested in a variety of systems, including optical cavities and solid-state devices.
We report the analogue simulation of an ergodiclocalized junction by using an array of 12 coupled superconducting qubits. To perform the simulation, we fabricated a superconducting quantum processor that is divided into two domains: a driven domain representing an ergodic system, while the second is localized under the effect of disorder. Due to the overlap between localized and delocalized states, for small disorder there is a proximity effect and localization is destroyed. To experimentally investigate this, we prepare a microwave excitation in the driven domain and explore how deep it can penetrate the disordered region by probing its dynamics. Furthermore, we performed an ensemble average over 50 realizations of disorder, which clearly shows the proximity effect. Our work opens a new avenue to build quantum simulators of driven-disordered systems with applications in condensed matter physics and material science