Abstract
The extension of thermodynamics into the quantum regime has received much attention in recent years. A primary objective of current research is to find thermodynamic tasks which can be enhanced by quantum mechanical effects. With this goal in mind, we explore the finite-time dynamics of absorption refrigerators composed of three quantum bits (qubits). The aim of this finite-time cooling is to reach low temperatures as fast as possible and subsequently extract the cold particle to exploit it for information processing purposes. We show that the coherent oscillations inherent to quantum dynamics can be harnessed to reach temperatures that are colder than the steady state in orders of magnitude less time, thereby providing a fast source of low-entropy qubits. This effect demonstrates that quantum thermal machines can surpass classical ones, reminiscent of quantum advantages in other fields, and is applicable to a broad range of technologically important scenarios.
Highlights
The development of classical thermodynamics in the 19th century underpinned the Industrial Revolution, and the enormous economic growth and social changes that followed
To illustrate this feature of the short-time dynamics, we plot several examples of the evolution of the cold qubit temperature in Fig. 2, which demonstrate that the Rabi oscillations allow the cold qubit to reach lower temperatures than the steady state
We have studied the dynamical evolution of threequbit absorption refrigerators in different regimes, using two different models of thermal dissipation in open quantum systems
Summary
The development of classical thermodynamics in the 19th century underpinned the Industrial Revolution, and the enormous economic growth and social changes that followed. Fast cooling is advantageous here since it may reduce the overall time taken to complete the quantum information protocol Both of these situations exemplify what we call single-shot cooling: the one-time application of a refrigeration device in order to considerably and rapidly reduce the temperature of the object in question. We demonstrate that dramatic improvements can be obtained in both the cooling time and the achievable temperatures by taking advantage of coherent oscillations that appear in the transient dynamics of the refrigerator. The presence of coherence in the device allows one to reach lower temperatures than the steady state This use of quantum coherence in order to cool below the steady-state temperature we refer to as quantum single-shot cooling. From a more fundamental perspective, our scheme provides one of the first examples in which quantum coherence plays an active and necessary role in improving the performance of machines driven only by thermal noise
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