A single-atom heat engine

By J. Rossnagel, S. Dawkins, K. N. Tolazzi, O. Abah, Eric Lutz, F. Schmidt-Kaler, K. Singer. Science, 2015

729 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Making a teeny tiny engine Steam locomotives, cars, and the drinking bird toy all convert heat into useful work as it cycles between two reservoirs at different temperatures. Usually, the working substance where the heat-work conversion occurs is a liquid or a gas, consisting of many molecules. Roβnagel et al. have made a working substance of a single calcium ion in a tapered ion trap. A laser-cooling beam plays the part of a cold reservoir for the calcium ion, and in turn, electric field noise acts as a hot reservoir. Science, this issue p. 325 A calcium ion held in a tapered trap is used as the working substance of a tiny thermodynamic engine. Heat engines convert thermal energy into mechanical work and generally involve a large number of particles. We report the experimental realization of a single-atom heat engine. An ion is confined in a linear Paul trap with tapered geometry and driven thermally by coupling it alternately to hot and cold reservoirs. The output power of the engine is used to drive a harmonic oscillation. From direct measurements of the ion dynamics, we were able to determine the thermodynamic cycles for various temperature differences of the reservoirs. We then used these cycles to evaluate the power P and efficiency η of the engine, obtaining values up to P = 3.4 × 10–22 joules per second and η = 0.28%, consistent with analytical estimations. Our results demonstrate that thermal machines can be reduced to the limit of single atoms.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/905a836a8f41ba0e893790145dab6173bf134bb8

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Citations in the corpus

The Quantum Harmonic Otto Cycle (2016, background): “Recently, a single ion heat engine with an effective harmonic trap frequency has been experimentally realised [2].”
Coherence effects in the performance of the quantum Otto heat engine (2018, background): “Experimentally, a single-ion heat engine [7], a three-ion refrigerator [8], and an Otto cycle exploring the harmonic oscillations of a nanobeam [9] have been recently implemented.”
Quantum thermodynamics (2015, background): “Finally, we note that various experimental implementations of quantum engines are expected in the near future [220].”
Quantum optimal control in quantum technologies. Strategic report on current status, visions and goals for research in Europe (2022, background): “for quantum information processing, such as ion traps [297, 500, 601], cold atoms [90], NV”