Brownian motors, i.e. devices able to produce useful work out of thermal forces with the help of other unbiased forces, provide an ideal benchmark for the investigation of quantum dissipative systems, for two reasons. First, the interaction with a dissipative environment plays an essential role in the performance of Brownian motors. Second, dissipative tunneling enriches the dynamics of quantum Brownian motors with respect to their classical counterpart, inducing features such as current reversals as a function of temperature. Here we report on our work on quantum Brownian motors and discuss the load characteristic of such a system.
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