Energy harvesting from anisotropic fluctuations

Abstract

We consider a rudimentary model for a heat engine, known as the Brownian gyrator, that consists of an overdamped system with two degrees of freedom in an anisotropic temperature field. Whereas the hallmark of the gyrator is a nonequilibrium steady-state curl-carrying probability current that can generate torque, we explore the coupling of this natural gyrating motion with a periodic actuation potential for the purpose of extracting work. We show that path-lengths traversed in the manifold of thermodynamic states, measured in a suitable Riemannian metric, represent dissipative losses, while area integrals of a work-density quantify work being extracted. Thus, the maximal amount of work that can be extracted relates to an isoperimetric problem, trading off area against length of an encircling path. We derive an isoperimetric inequality that provides a universal bound on the efficiency of all cyclic operating protocols, and a bound on how fast a closed path can be traversed before it becomes impossible to extract positive work. The analysis presented provides guiding principles for building autonomous engines that extract work from anistropic fluctuations.

arXiv comment5 pages 5 figures

References in corpus (16)

• A nonequilibrium equality for free energy differences
• Stochastic thermodynamics, fluctuation theorems, and molecular machines
• The Entropy Production Fluctuation Theorem and the Nonequilibrium Work Relation for Free Energy Differences
• Dynamical Ensembles in Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics
• Steady State Thermodynamics of Langevin Systems
• Measuring thermodynamic length
• Broken detailed balance and non-equilibrium dynamics in living systems
• On the heat flux and entropy produced by thermal fluctuations
• The Brownian gyrator: a minimal heat engine on the nano-scale
• Thermodynamic Geometry of Microscopic Heat Engines
• Experimental Realization of a Minimal Microscopic Heat Engine
• Two-temperature Langevin dynamics in a parabolic potential
• Electrical Autonomous Brownian Gyrator
• Statistical properties of the energy exchanged between two heat baths coupled by thermal fluctuations
• Engineered Swift Equilibration of a Brownian Gyrator
• A minimal model of an autonomous thermal motor

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Driving rapidly while remaining in control: classical shortcuts from Hamiltonian to stochastic dynamics
• A geometric bound on the efficiency of irreversible thermodynamic cycles
• Pareto-optimal cycles for power, efficiency and fluctuations of quantum heat engines using reinforcement learning
• Thermodynamics and optimal protocols of multidimensional quadratic Brownian systems
• Nonequilibrium diffusion processes via non-Hermitian electromagnetic quantum mechanics with application to the statistics of entropy production in the Brownian gyrator
• Cooperative dynamics in two-component out-of-equilibrium systems: Molecular "spinning tops"