Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Standard heat machines (engine, heat pump, refrigerator) are composed of a system (working fluid) coupled to at least two equilibrium baths at different temperatures and periodically driven by an external device (piston or rotor) sometimes called the work reservoir. The aim of this paper is to go beyond this scheme by considering environments which are stationary but cannot be decomposed into a few baths at thermal equilibrium. Such situations are important, for example in solar cells, chemical machines in biology, various realizations of laser cooling or nanoscopic machines driven by laser radiation. We classify non-equilibrium baths depending on their thermodynamic behavior and show that the efficiency of heat machines powered by them is limited by the generalized Carnot bound.
Source: New Journal of Physics
Authors: Robert Alicki, David Gelbwaser-Klimovsky
Institutions: University of Gdańsk, Harvard University
Language: Spanish
Subfield: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $955
OpenAlex ID: W1454366337