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Review of the Role of Correlation, Interaction, and Information Transmission Speed in Quantum Heat Engines

Salehi Kadijani, Mohammad Sadegh | 2018

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 51568 (04)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Physics
  6. Advisor(s): Rezakhani, Alireza
  7. Abstract:
  8. The study of thermodynamics of small-scale systems or quantum thermodynamics has been recently receiving a lot of attention from quantum scientists in the field of quantum information. The main purpose of this thesis is to review the effects of quantum phenomena such as correlations, on the laws of thermodynamics and specifically on the efficiency of quantum heat engines. We first review some of the most important topics of classical thermodynamics such as the laws of thermodynamics, thermodynamic potentials and heat engines. The trade-off between power and efficiency for classical heat engines is investigated. It is shown that, this is impossible to have a heat engine performing with the Carnot efficiency at finite power. Next, we switch our attention to the introduction of the different approaches taken towards understanding the thermodynamics of small-scale systems. Furthermore, we employ these techniques to study the behavior of heat engines working in quantum realm.Having done that, we focus on the implications of quantum phenomena on the efficiency of quantum heat engines. We will see that quantum phenomena do not always enhance the efficiency of heat engines, so quantum heat engines may have no advantages over their classical counterparts in terms of efficiency. However, correlations and interactions can improve the speed of work extraction from quantum systems. In the other words, there exists a power enhancement in quantum heat engines due to the presence of correlations. To understand these results in a better way, we devised our own model of quantum heat engine. Analysing the efficiency of the engine, we can see that the definition of the efficiency is highly reliant on our interpretation of the energy related to the correlations. In case we consider this as a useful energy,we will surpass the Carnot bound. However, regarding the correlation energy as the energy that needs to be invested to run the engine, we can see that the efficiency is always bounded by Carnot’s. Finally, we study the role of internal interactions between the subsystems of working medium of an engine on the efficiency of quantum heat engines. It can be shown that, these interactions are harmful to the efficiency of heat engines as they can change the counstruction of their cycles
  9. Keywords:
  10. Quantum Thermodynamics ; Quantum Heat Engine ; Correlation ; Efficiency ; Power

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