Heat-machine control by quantum-state preparation: from quantum engines to refrigerators

Abstract

We explore the dependence of the performance bounds of heat engines and refrigerators on the initial quantum state and the subsequent evolution of their piston, modeled by a quantized harmonic oscillator. Our goal is to provide a fully quantized treatment of self-contained (autonomous) heat machines, as opposed to their prevailing semiclassical description that consists of a quantum system alternately coupled to a hot or a cold heat bath, and parametrically driven by a classical time-dependent piston or field. Here by contrast, there is no external time-dependent driving. Instead, the evolution is caused by the stationary simultaneous interaction of two heat baths (having distinct spectra and temperatures) with a single two-level system that is in turn coupled to the quantum piston. The fully quantized treatment we put forward allows us to investigate work extraction and refrigeration by the tools of quantum-optical amplifier and dissipation theory, particularly, by the analysis of amplified or dissipated phase-plane quasiprobability distributions. Our main insight is that quantum states may be thermodynamic resources and can provide a powerful handle, or control, on the efficiency of the heat machine. In particular, a piston initialized in a coherent state can cause the engine to produce work at an efficiency above the Carnot bound in the linear amplification regime. In the refrigeration regime, the coefficient of performance can transgress the Carnot bound if the piston is initialized in a Fock state. The piston may be realized by a vibrational mode, as in nanomechanical setups, or an electromagnetic field mode, as in cavity-based scenarios.

References in corpus (15)

• Quantum Thermodynamics
• Quantum Thermodynamic Cycles and quantum heat engines
• A nano heat engine beyond the Carnot limit
• Phonon-induced spin-spin interactions in diamond nanostructures: application to spin squeezing
• Thermodynamical Control by Frequent Quantum Measurements
• Performance bound for quantum absorption refrigerators
• Employing trapped cold ions to verify the quantum Jarzynski equality
• Minimal universal quantum heat machine
• Reversible state transfer between superconducting qubits and atomic ensembles
• Local observation of antibunching in a trapped Fermi gas
• Quantum bath refrigeration towards absolute zero: unattainability principle challenged
• Work and energy gain of heat-pumped quantized amplifiers
• Zeno and anti-Zeno polarization control of spin-ensembles by induced dephasing
• Quantum thermodynamic processes: A control theory for machine cycles
• Generation of macroscopic quantum-superposition states by linear coupling to a bath

Cited by in corpus (75)

• The extraction of work from quantum coherence
• A spin heat engine coupled to a harmonic-oscillator flywheel
• Quantum thermal machines and batteries
• Quantum thermal absorption machines: refrigerators, engines and clocks
• Coherence-assisted single-shot cooling by quantum absorption refrigerators
• Thermodynamics of quantum systems under dynamical control
• On the operation of machines powered by quantum non-thermal baths
• Universal Coherence-Induced Power Losses of Quantum Heat Engines in Linear Response
• Fully quantum fluctuation theorems
• Parameter Concentration in Quantum Approximate Optimization
• Periodic Thermodynamics of Open Quantum Systems
• Strongly coupled quantum heat machines
• Non-equilibrium quantum heat machines
• Multiatom Quantum Coherences in Micromasers as Fuel for Thermal and Nonthermal Machines
• Realising a quantum absorption refrigerator with an atom-cavity system
• Concepts of work in autonomous quantum heat engines
• Most energetic passive states
• Quantum coherence, many-body correlations, and non-thermal effects for autonomous thermal machines
• Quantum Statistical Enhancement of the Collective Performance of Multiple Bosonic Engines
• Absorption refrigerators based on Coulomb-coupled single-electron systems
• Single-atom heat machines enabled by energy quantization
• Performance limits of multilevel and multipartite quantum heat machines
• Power enhancement of heat engines via correlated thermalization in multilevel systems
• Internal dissipation and heat leaks in quantum thermodynamic cycles
• Measurement-induced operation of two-ion quantum heat machines
• A small quantum absorption refrigerator with reversed couplings
• Energetic and entropic effects of bath-induced coherences
• Roles of quantum coherences in thermal machines
• Cooling by heating in nonequilibrium nanosystems
• Minimal quantum heat manager boosted by bath spectral filtering
• Finite-time performance of a single-ion quantum Otto engine
• Entropy dynamics of a dephasing model in a squeezed thermal bath
• Single-ion quantum Otto engine with always-on bath interaction
• Ground-state cooling of mechanical resonators by quantum reservoir engineering
• Extending the laws of thermodynamics for arbitrary autonomous quantum systems
• Work Generation from Thermal Noise by Quantum Phase-Sensitive Observation
• Two-body quantum absorption refrigerators with optomechanical-like interactions
• Autonomous implementation of thermodynamic cycles at the nanoscale
• Are quantum thermodynamic machines better than their classical counterparts?
• On thermodynamic inconsistencies in several photosynthetic and solar cell models and how to fix them
• Quantum Energy Lines and the optimal output ergotropy problem
• Speed and Efficiency Limits of Multilevel Incoherent Heat Engines
• Work and information from thermal states after subtraction of energy quanta
• The production rate of the system-bath mutual information
• Quantum magnetometry using two-stroke thermal machines
• Operational nonclassicality in minimal autonomous thermal machines
• Thermodynamics of quantum feedback cooling
• A Quantum Heat Machine from Fast Optomechanics
• Minimal quantum thermal machine in a bandgap environment: non-Markovian features and anti-Zeno advantage
• Autonomous Quantum Devices: When Are They Realizable without Additional Thermodynamic Costs?
• Quantum features and signatures of quantum-thermal machines
• A Quantum Otto Engine with Shortcuts to Thermalization and Adiabaticity
• Extractable work in quantum electromechanics
• Enabling the self-contained refrigerator to work beyond its limits by filtering the reservoir
• Thermal Baths as Quantum Resources: More Friends than Foes?
• Thermodynamic principles and implementations of quantum machines
• High-fidelity non-adiabatic cutting and stitching of a spin chain via local control
• Time periodicity from randomness in quantum systems
• Quantum work: Reconciling quantum mechanics and thermodynamics
• Additional energy-information relations in thermodynamics of small systems
• Engineering entanglement between resonators by hot environment
• Work extraction from single-mode thermal noise by measurements: How important is information?
• Energy upper bound for structurally stable N-passive states
• Mixing thermal coherent states for precision and range enhancement in quantum thermometry
• Fluctuation theorems for genuine quantum mechanical regimes
• Testing a Quantum Heat Pump with a Two-Level Spin
• Maximum Power of Coupled-Qubit Otto Engines
• Thermodynamic indistinguishability and field state fingerprint of quantum optical amplifiers
• Nonequilibrium quantum heat transport between structured environments
• Autonomous quantum machines and the finite sized Quasi-Ideal clock
• Quantum control of classical motion: piston dynamics in a Rabi-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate
• On the energetic analysis of autonomous quantum systems
• Thermodynamic laws in isolated systems
• Antibunching via cooling by heating
• Quantum thermal rectification via state-dependent two-photon dissipation