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.
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.
Microorganisms such as bacteria are active matters which consume chemical energy and generate their unique run-and-tumble motion. A swarm of such microorganisms provide a nonequilibrium active environment whose noise characteristics are different from those of thermal equilibrium reservoirs. One important difference is a finite persistence time, which is considerably large compared to that of the equilibrium noise, that is, the active noise is colored. Here, we study a mesoscopic energy-harvesting device (engine) with active reservoirs harnessing this noise nature. For a simple linear model, we analytically show that the engine efficiency can surpass the conventional Carnot bound, thus the power-efficiency tradeoff constraint is released, and the efficiency at the maximum power can overcome the Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency. We find that the supremacy of the active engine critically depends on the time-scale symmetry of two active reservoirs.
The equilibrium properties of a Janus fluid made of two-face particles confined to a one-dimensional channel are revisited. The exact Gibbs free energy for a finite number of particles $N$ is exactly derived for both quenched and annealed realizations. It is proved that the results for both classes of systems tend in the thermodynamic limit ($Ntoinfty$) to a common expression recently derived (Maestre M A G and Santos A 2020 J Stat Mech 063217). The theoretical finite-size results are particularized to the Kern--Frenkel model and confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations for quenched and (both biased and unbiased) annealed systems.
We study pressurised self-avoiding ring polymers in two dimensions using Monte Carlo simulations, scaling arguments and Flory-type theories, through models which generalise the model of Leibler, Singh and Fisher [Phys. Rev. Lett. Vol. 59, 1989 (1987)]. We demonstrate the existence of a thermodynamic phase transition at a non-zero scaled pressure $tilde{p}$, where $tilde{p} = Np/4pi$, with the number of monomers $N rightarrow infty$ and the pressure $p rightarrow 0$, keeping $tilde{p}$ constant, in a class of such models. This transition is driven by bond energetics and can be either continuous or discontinuous. It can be interpreted as a shape transition in which the ring polymer takes the shape, above the critical pressure, of a regular N-gon whose sides scale smoothly with pressure, while staying unfaceted below this critical pressure. In the general case, we argue that the transition is replaced by a sharp crossover. The area, however, scales with $N^2$ for all positive $p$ in all such models, consistent with earlier scaling theories.
Active matter has been intensely studied for its wealth of intriguing properties such as collective motion, motility-induced phase separation (MIPS), and giant fluctuations away from criticality. However, the precise connection of active materials with their equilibrium counterparts has remained unclear. For two-dimensional (2D) systems, this is also because the experimental and theoretical understanding of the liquid, hexatic, and solid equilibrium phases and their phase transitions is very recent. Here, we use self-propelled particles with inverse-power-law repulsions (but without alignment interactions) as a minimal model for 2D active materials. A kinetic Monte Carlo (MC) algorithm allows us to map out the complete quantitative phase diagram. We demonstrate that the active system preserves all equilibrium phases, and that phase transitions are shifted to higher densities as a function of activity. The two-step melting scenario is maintained. At high activity, a critical point opens up a gas-liquid MIPS region. We expect that the independent appearance of two-step melting and of MIPS is generic for a large class of two-dimensional active systems.