Entropy production in a photovoltaic cell

Abstract

We evaluate entropy production in a photovoltaic cell that is modeled by four electronic levels resonantly coupled to thermally populated field modes at different temperatures. We use a formalism recently proposed, the so-called multiple parallel worlds, to consistently address the nonlinearity of entropy in terms of density matrix. Our result shows that entropy production is the difference between two flows: a semiclassical flow that linearly depends on occupational probabilities, and another flow that depends nonlinearly on quantum coherence and has no semiclassical analog. We show that entropy production in the cells depends on environmentally induced decoherence time and energy detuning. We characterize regimes where reversal flow of information takes place from a cold to hot bath. Interestingly, we identify a lower bound on entropy production, which sets limitations on the statistics of dissipated heat in the cells.

arXiv comment7 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (32)

• Quantum entanglement
• A nonequilibrium equality for free energy differences
• Stochastic thermodynamics, fluctuation theorems, and molecular machines
• Entanglement in quantum critical phenomena
• The Entropy Production Fluctuation Theorem and the Nonequilibrium Work Relation for Free Energy Differences
• High Efficiency Carrier Multiplication in PbSe Nanocrystals: Implications for Solar Energy
• Entropy production along a stochastic trajectory and an integral fluctuation theorem
• Information heat engine: converting information to energy by feedback control
• The Physics of Maxwell's demon and information
• Stochastic thermodynamics under coarse-graining
• Quantum Noise as an Entanglement Meter
• Suppressing relaxation in superconducting qubits by quasiparticle pumping
• Distribution of Entropy Production in a Single-Electron Box
• Measurement of Stochastic Entropy Production
• Entanglement in spin chains and lattices with long-range Ising-type interactions
• Theory of multiexciton generation in semiconductor nanocrystals
• Excitonic energy transfer in light-harvesting complexes in purple bacteria
• Effects of system-bath entanglement on the performance of light-harvesting systems: A quantum heat engine perspective
• Statistics of Heat Transfer in Mesoscopic Circuits
• Realistic and verifiable coherent control of excitonic states in a light harvesting complex
• Rényi generalizations of quantum information measures
• Entanglement entropy in dynamic quantum-coherent conductors
• Exact correspondence between Renyi entropy flows and physical flows
• Dynamics of parametric fluctuations induced by quasiparticle tunneling in superconducting flux qubits
• Rényi entropy flows from quantum heat engines
• Full counting statistics of information content in the presence of Coulomb interaction
• Flows of Renyi entropies
• Noise and microresonance of critical current in Josephson junction induced by Kondo trap states
• The effect of environmental coupling on tunneling of quasiparticles in Josephson junctions
• Keldysh formalism for multiple parallel worlds
• Rate of tunneling nonequilibrium quasiparticles in superconducting qubits
• Towards Tripartite Hybrid Entanglement in Quantum Dot Molecules

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Quantum thermal absorption machines: refrigerators, engines and clocks
• Quantum statistics of a single-atom Scovil-Schulz-DuBois heat engine
• Entropy Production in Quantum Is Different
• Full counting statistics of information content
• Error mitigation of entangled states using brainbox quantum autoencoders
• Full-counting statistics of information content and heat quantity in the steady state and the optimum capacity