Informative priors and the analogy between quantum and classical heat engines

Abstract

When incomplete information about the control parameters is quantified as a prior distribution, a subtle connection emerges between quantum heat engines and their classical analogs. We study the quantum model where the uncertain parameters are the intrinsic energy scales and compare with the classical models where the intermediate temperature is the uncertain parameter. The prior distribution quantifying the incomplete information has the form $\pi (x)\propto 1/x$ in both the quantum and the classical models. The expected efficiency calculated in near-equilibrium limit approaches the value of one third of Carnot efficiency.

Revtex 6 pages, Submitted for Proceedings of Frontiers of Quantum and Mesoscopic Thermodynamics (FQMT-2011) Conference

References in corpus (5)

• Efficiency at maximum power of low dissipation Carnot engines
• The second law, Maxwell's daemon and work derivable from quantum heat engines
• Work extremum principle: Structure and function of quantum heat engines
• A Coupled Quantum Otto Cycle
• Expected Behavior of Quantum Thermodynamic Machines with Prior Information

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Multi-level quantum Diesel engine of non-interacting fermions in a one-dimensional box
• Quantum Brayton Engine of Non-Interacting Fermions in a One-Dimensional Box
• Estimating performance of Feynman's ratchet with limited information
• Ignorance based inference of optimality in thermodynamic processes