Quantum heat engine


A quantum heat engine generates power from heat flow between hot and cold reservoirs, operating under the principles of quantum mechanics.

History

Scovil and Schulz-DuBois first connected the quantum amplifier to Carnot efficiency in 1959, building a quantum heat engine with a 3-level maser. Geusic, Schulz-DuBois, De Grasse, and Scovil proposed quantum refrigerators, which pump heat from a cold to a hot reservoir using power, in the same year. Wineland and Hänsch suggested laser-driven processes, termed optical pumping or laser cooling. Alicki reported that heat engines and refrigerators can function at the single-particle scale, necessitating quantum thermodynamics.

3-level amplifier

A 3-level amplifier uses hot and cold reservoirs to maintain population inversion between two energy levels, amplifying light via stimulated emission. The ground level and excited level connect to a hot reservoir at temperature, with an energy gap. At equilibrium, the population ratio is: where is the Planck constant, and is the Boltzmann constant. A cold reservoir at temperature couples the ground level to an intermediate level, with an energy gap. At equilibrium: The device amplifies when levels 3-h and 2-c couple to an external field of frequency. Efficiency, defined as the ratio of work output to heat input, is: Amplification requires population inversion: equivalent to: This leads to an efficiency limit: where is the Carnot cycle efficiency, achieved at zero gain. Reversing the process creates a refrigerator, with a coefficient of performance :

Types

Quantum devices operate either continuously or via reciprocating cycles. Continuous devices include solar cells, thermoelectric devices, and lasers. Continuous refrigerators use optical pumping or laser cooling. Reciprocating devices, such as four-stroke or two-stroke machines, mimic classical engines with non-commuting strokes. Common cycles include the Carnot cycle and Otto cycle. The quantum framework allows to obtain from first principles equations of motion for the working medium. The dynamics of the cycle can be solved
and a fixed point is sought. The performance characteristics can be calculated for example the power and the and heat flux. The dynamical framework reveals the universal feature of the tradeoff between power and efficiency connecting to
Endoreversible thermodynamics.

Reciprocating

Researchers studied quantum versions of thermodynamic cycles, including the Carnot cycle, Stirling cycle, and Otto cycle. The Otto cycle serves as a model for other reciprocating cycles. File:Q-otto-cycle.pdf|thumb|Quantum Otto cycle in the Entropy plane, showing energy entropy and Von Neumann entropy. represents the externally controlled internal frequency, mimicking inverse volume in the Otto cycle. Red and blue lines indicate hot and cold isochores. The cycle represents a heat pump. The Otto cycle consists of four segments:
Propagators are linear operators that define the working medium's state. Consecutive propagators do not commute, ensuring non-zero power. The working medium, such as spin systems or harmonic oscillators, requires optimized cycle time. At long cycle times, the engine operates quasi-adiabatically, with efficiency, below Carnot efficiency. At high temperatures, efficiency at maximum power is, matching endoreversible thermodynamics. Short cycle times cause friction-like effects due to non-adiabatic changes, increasing power demands and coherence-induced dissipation. Frictionless solutions exist for finite-time adiabatic expansion/compression. Optimal performance occurs when coherence is minimized. At very short cycle times, coherence enhances power. Allahverdyan, Hovhannisyan, and Mahler proposed a two-stroke quantum cycle using two qubits with frequencies and. The first stroke partially equilibrates the qubits with hot and cold reservoirs. The second stroke swaps qubit states, preserving entropy and generating power. Quantum Otto cycle refrigerators align with magnetic refrigeration. A Quantum Carnot cycle with a qubit as a working medium has been analyzed , demonstrating the quantum origin of the tradeoff between power and efficiency.

Continuous

Continuous engines, analogous to turbines, couple to an external periodic field, typically the electromagnetic field, modeling a laser. Models vary by working medium and heat reservoirs. Studied systems include two-level, three-level, four-level, and coupled harmonic oscillators. Periodic driving splits the energy levels, enabling selective coupling to reservoirs and power production. Ignoring this splitting in equations of motion violates the second law of thermodynamics. Scully proposed non-thermal fuels, such as coherence or squeezed thermal baths, to increase the hot reservoir's energy without raising entropy, complying with the second law.

Equivalence of heat machines

Uzdin, Levy, and Kosloff reported that two-stroke, four-stroke, and continuous quantum engines become thermodynamically equivalent in a quantum regime, producing identical work and heat with the same efficiency, driven by coherent work extraction without a classical analogue.
Reciprocating devices have been suggested operating by either the Carnot cycle or the Otto cycle.
In both types the quantum description allows to obtain equation of motion for the working medium and the heat flux.
When the cycle is completed they all turn out to provide the same amount of work and consume the same amount of heat. This equivalence is associated with a coherent work extraction mechanism and has no classical analogue. These quantum features have been demonstrated experimentally.

Open systems

Elementary quantum heat engines operate near equilibrium, with discrete energy levels as their primary quantum feature. Realistic devices, operating out of equilibrium, experience friction, heat leaks, and finite heat flow. Quantum thermodynamics provides a dynamical framework for such systems. Open quantum system theory describes the working medium's dynamics, tracing out the reservoirs. The total Hamiltonian is: where is time-dependent. The reduced equation of motion is: where is the density operator, and represents dissipative dynamics. Energy change is: yielding the dynamical first law of thermodynamics: * Power: * Heat currents:,. Entropy production rate is: A thermodynamically consistent derivation uses the weak coupling limit, assuming uncorrelated system and reservoirs: The equation of motion becomes: where is the Liouville superoperator, often in the Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad form. Strong coupling theories also exist.

Refrigerators

Absorption

The absorption refrigerator, an autonomous quantum device, requires no external power or intervention. It uses three reservoirs: power, hot, and cold. The tricycle model uses three oscillators: with resonance condition. The refrigerator removes excitations from the cold and power reservoirs, generating an excitation in the hot reservoir. The interaction Hamiltonian is: where is the coupling strength. Energy balance follows the first law of thermodynamics: At steady state,. Entropy production, per the second law of thermodynamics, is: When, the power reservoir produces no entropy, yielding pure power:. Aamir and others implemented this in a superconducting circuit to reset a Qubit.

Quantum analysis of the [third law of thermodynamics].

Nernst proposed two formulations of the third law of thermodynamics. The Nernst heat theorem states that a pure substance's entropy approaches zero as temperature nears absolute zero. The unattainability principle states that no procedure can cool a system to absolute zero in finite operations. At steady state, the second law of thermodynamics requires non-negative entropy production. As the cold reservoir approaches absolute zero, entropy production must scale as: The third law strengthens this to, ensuring zero entropy production at absolute zero, with heat current scaling as. The unattainability principle, rephrased by Levy, Alicki, and Kosloff, states that no refrigerator can reach absolute zero in finite time. Cooling dynamics follow:
where is the reservoir's heat capacity. With and , the cooling exponent is: If, cooling to absolute zero in finite time violates the third law, making the unattainability principle more restrictive than the Nernst heat theorem.