Abstract
The finite-time operation of a quantum heat engine that uses a single particle as a working medium generally increases the output power at the expense of inducing friction that lowers the cycle efficiency. We propose to scale up a quantum heat engine utilizing a many-particle working medium in combination with the use of shortcuts to adiabaticity to boost the nonadiabatic performance by eliminating quantum friction and reducing the cycle time. To this end, we first analyze the finite-time thermodynamics of a quantum Otto cycle implemented with a quantum fluid confined in a time-dependent harmonic trap. We show that nonadiabatic effects can be controlled and tailored to match the adiabatic performance using a variety of shortcuts to adiabaticity. As a result, the nonadiabatic dynamics of the scaled-up many-particle quantum heat engine exhibits no friction, and the cycle can be run at maximum efficiency with a tunable output power. We demonstrate our results with a working medium consisting of particles with inverse-square pairwise interactions that includes non-interacting and hard-core bosons as limiting cases.
Highlights
Quantum thermodynamics resembles a fruitful crucible of research fields where the foundations of physics, information science and statistical mechanics merge [1,2]
We show that the nonequilibrium dynamics of the many-particle thermodynamic cycle can be engineered via shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA) to run the quantum heat engines (QHE) with zero friction
Finite-time thermodynamics aims at optimizing the nonadiabatic performance of thermal machines, required for any realistic application
Summary
Quantum thermodynamics resembles a fruitful crucible of research fields where the foundations of physics, information science and statistical mechanics merge [1,2] It is further spurred by the development of quantum technologies that have facilitated the realization and control of thermal machines and related devices exhibiting quantum dynamics. It is worth pointing out that a universal behavior emerges among different types of cycles in the limit of small action per cycle [16] These works show that when a single-particle QHE is operated in a finite amount of time, nonadiabatic excitations act as quantum friction, reducing the efficiency of the engine. The maximum efficiency is achieved for long cycle times, in the adiabatic limit, when the output power of the QHE vanishes This state of affairs is already present in classical heat engines and gave rise to the field of finite-time thermodynamics
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