Double quantum-dot engine fueled by entanglement between electron spins

Abstract

The laws of thermodynamics allow work extraction from a single heat bath provided that the entropy decrease of the bath is compensated for by another part of the system. We propose a thermodynamic quantum engine that exploits this principle and consists of two electrons on a double quantum dot (QD). The engine is fueled by providing it with singlet spin states, where the electron spins on different QDs are maximally entangled, and its operation involves only changing the tunnel coupling between the QDs. Work can be extracted since the entropy of an entangled singlet is lower than that of a thermal (mixed) state, although they look identical when measuring on a single QD. We show that the engine is an optimal thermodynamic engine in the long-time limit. In addition, we include a microscopic description of the bath and analyze the engine's finite-time performance using experimentally relevant parameters.

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