Abstract
Starting with the Carnot engine, the ideal efficiency of a heat engine has been associated with quasistatic transformations and vanishingly small output power. Here, we exactly calculate the thermodynamic properties of an isothermal heat engine, in which the working medium is a periodically driven underdamped harmonic oscillator, focusing instead on the opposite, antiadiabatic limit, where the period of a cycle is much shorter than the system's timescales. We show that in that limit it is possible to approach the ideal energy conversion efficiency η=1, with finite output power and vanishingly small relative power fluctuations. The simultaneous realization of all the three desiderata of a heat engine is possible thanks to the breaking of time-reversal symmetry. We also show that non-Markovian dynamics can further improve the power-efficiency trade-off.1 MoreReceived 22 September 2020Accepted 15 February 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.013237Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasOpen quantum systemsQuantum thermodynamicsPhysical SystemsNonequilibrium systemsQuantum heat engines & refrigeratorsStatistical PhysicsCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics
Highlights
Since its inception, the development of thermodynamics and its technological applications have been boosted by fundamental questions [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
It is desirable that a heat engine operates close to the ideal efficiency, delivers large power, and exhibits small power fluctuations [21,22]
We focus on the case with broken time-reversal symmetry (TRS), showing that it is possible to achieve finite output power Pout,maximum efficiency (ME) > 0 and vanishing relative output power fluctuations = ME Dout,ME/Po2ut,ME with ηME → 1
Summary
The development of thermodynamics and its technological applications have been boosted by fundamental questions [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. On the other hand, such result does not apply for cyclic heat engines, for which a less restrictive trade-off has been derived [46] for overdamped Markovian dynamics This interesting result raises the following questions: (i) is it possible to approach the ideal efficiency at finite power and finite (or even vanishing) relative power fluctuations in a purely dynamical model, without using the overdamped and Markov or other master equation approximations?
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