Coherence effects in the performance of the quantum Otto heat engine

By Patrice A. Camati, Jonas F. G. Santos, R. Serra. Physical Review A, 2018

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The working substance fueling a quantum heat engine may contain prominent quantum properties such as coherence and nonclassical correlations. In particular, coherence has been somewhat related to quantum friction, whose origin has been mostly associated with the noncommutativity of a driven Hamiltonian at different times. Here, we consider a quantum Otto heat engine operated at finite time and undergoing incomplete thermalization with a heat source. We introduce analytical expressions relating the engine efficiency and extractable power to the coherence measured in the energy basis of the working substance during the engine cycle. We show that coherence, which has been related to an increase in entropy production and irreversibility, can in also be employed to improve the quantum engine performance, mitigating quantum friction. Such an improvement may be achieved by carefully tuning cycle parameters. To illustrate this coherent improvement we performed a numerical analysis in an experimentally feasible example.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Civil and Structural Engineering, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6c367b00e083246c39bd32b341c4d27c4e9fcf5c