Stationary engines in and beyond the linear response regime at the Carnot efficiency

Abstract

The condition for stationary engines to attain the Carnot efficiency in and beyond the linear response regime is investigated. We find that this condition for finite-size engines is significantly different from that for macroscopic engines in the thermodynamic limit. For the case of finite-size engines, the tight-coupling condition in the linear response regime directly implies the attainability of the Carnot efficiency beyond the linear response regime. Contrary to this, for the case of macroscopic engines in the thermodynamic limit, there are three types of mechanisms to attain the Carnot efficiency. One mechanism allows engines to attain the Carnot efficiency only in the linear response limit, while other two mechanisms enable engines to attain the Carnot efficiency beyond the linear response regime. These three mechanisms are classified by introducing tight-coupling window.

11 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Optimal energy quanta to current conversion
• Thermodynamics of a physical model implementing a Maxwell demon
• Fluctuation Theorem for Partially-masked Nonequilibrium Dynamics
• Role of measurement-feedback separation in autonomous Maxwell's demons
• Efficiency versus Speed in Quantum Heat Engines: Rigorous Constraint from Lieb-Robinson Bound

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Collective power: Minimal model for thermodynamics of nonequilibrium phase transitions
• Collective effects enhancing power and efficiency
• Optimal thermodynamic uncertainty relation in Markov jump processes
• Diverging, but negligible power at Carnot efficiency: theory and experiment
• Fundamental relation between entropy production and heat current
• Thermoelectrics of Interacting Nanosystems -- Exploiting Superselection instead of Time-Reversal Symmetry
• Time-symmetric current and its fluctuation response relation around nonequilibrium stalling stationary state
• Achieving Carnot efficiency in a finite-power Brownian Carnot cycle with arbitrary temperature difference
• Compatibility of Carnot efficiency with finite power in an underdamped Brownian Carnot cycle in small temperature-difference regime
• Maximum Power of Coupled-Qubit Otto Engines
• Efficiency at the maximum power of the power law dissipative Carnot-like Heat engines with non-adiabatic dissipation
• Fluctuation-response relation of time-symmetric quantities around general nonequilibrium stationary state