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The efficiency of cyclic heat engines is limited by the Carnot bound. This bound follows from the second law of thermodynamics and is attained by engines that operate between two thermal baths under the reversibility condition whereby the total entropy does not increase. By contrast, the efficiency of engines powered by quantum non-thermal baths has been claimed to surpass the thermodynamic Carnot bound. The key to understanding the performance of such engines is a proper division of the energy supplied by the bath to the system into heat and work, depending on the associated change in the system entropy and ergotropy. Due to their hybrid character, the efficiency bound for quantum engines powered by a non-thermal bath does not solely follow from the laws of thermodynamics. Hence, the thermodynamic Carnot bound is inapplicable to such hybrid engines. Yet, they do not violate the principles of thermodynamics. An alternative means of boosting machine performance is the concept of heat-to-work conversion catalysis by quantum non-linear (squeezed) pumping of the piston mode. This enhancement is due to the increased ability of the squeezed piston to store ergotropy. Since the catalyzed machine is fueled by thermal baths, it adheres to the Carnot bound. We conclude by arguing that it is not quantumness per se that improves the machine performance, but rather the properties of the baths, the working fluid and the piston that boost the ergotropy and minimize the wasted heat in both the input and the output.
Recent understanding of the thermodynamics of small-scale systems have enabled the characterization of the thermodynamic requirements of implementing quantum processes for fixed input states. Here, we extend these results to construct optimal univers
We study coupled quantum systems as the working media of thermodynamic machines. Under a suitable phase-space transformation, the coupled systems can be expressed as a composition of independent subsystems. We find that for the coupled systems, the f
Interesting effects arise in cyclic machines where both heat and ergotropy transfer take place between the energising bath and the system (the working fluid). Such effects correspond to unconventional decompositions of energy exchange between the bat
Thermal machines perform useful tasks--such as producing work, cooling, or heating--by exchanging energy, and possibly additional conserved quantities such as particles, with reservoirs. Here we consider thermal machines that perform more than one us
The seminal work by Sadi Carnot in the early nineteenth century provided the blueprint of a reversible heat engine and the celebrated second law of thermodynamics eventually followed. Almost two centuries later, the quest to formulate a quantum theor