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arXiv:1104.0260

Cooling by heating

Andrea Mari, J. Eisert

Published Apr 1, 2011• 0 citations
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Abstract

We introduce the idea of actually cooling quantum systems by means of incoherent thermal light, hence giving rise to a counter-intuitive mechanism of "cooling by heating". In this effect, the mere incoherent occupation of a quantum mechanical mode serves as a trigger to enhance the coupling between other modes. This notion of effectively rendering states more coherent by driving with incoherent thermal quantum noise is applied here to the opto-mechanical setting, where this effect occurs most naturally. We discuss two ways of describing this situation, one of them making use of stochastic sampling of Gaussian quantum states with respect to stationary classical stochastic processes. The potential of experimentally demonstrating this counter-intuitive effect in opto-mechanical systems with present technology is sketched.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1104.0260

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We introduce the idea of actually cooling quantum systems by means of incoherent thermal light, hence giving rise to a counter-intuitive mechanism of "cooling by heating". In this effect, the mere incoherent occupation of a quantum mechanical mode serves as a trigger to enhance the coupling between other modes. This notion of effectively rendering states more coherent by driving with incoherent thermal quantum noise is applied here to the opto-mechanical setting, where this effect occurs most naturally. We discuss two ways of describing this situation, one of them making use of stochastic sampling of Gaussian quantum states with respect to stationary classical stochastic processes. The potential of experimentally demonstrating this counter-intuitive effect in opto-mechanical systems with present technology is sketched.
We investigate statistics of the photon (phonon) field undergoing linear and nonlinear damping processes. An effective two-photon (phonon) nonlinear ``cooling by heating'' process is realized from linear damping by spectral filtering of the heat baths present in the system. This cooling process driven by incoherent quantum thermal noise can create quantum states of the photon field. In fact, for high temperatures of the spectrally filtered heat baths, sub-Poissonian statistics with strong antibunching in the photon (phonon) field are reported. This notion of the emergence and control of quantumness by incoherent thermal quantum noise is applied to a quantum system comprised of a two-level system and a harmonic oscillator or analogous optomechanical setting. Our analysis may provide a promising direction for the preparation and protection of quantum features via nonlinear damping that can be controlled with incoherent thermal quantum noise.
Common intuition tells us that if one part of a connected system is cooled continuously, the other parts should also cool down. This intuition can be given a microscopic foundation for the case of a generic quantum system coupled to a "lead" that is maintained at a given temperature. We show that by suppressing resonant energy exchange between the two parts, one can reverse the fate of the system, namely, it can heat up toward its most excited state as the lead is cooled to its ground state, and vice versa. This anti-thermal dynamics arises in a broad class of systems with a conserved U(1)U(1)U(1) charge, and can be tested with two qubits in existing setups. We show that the mechanism allows one to prepare mid-spectrum nonclassical states, stable temperature gradients in closed systems, and highly athermal states where subspaces heat in the presence of overall cooling. Our findings highlight the critical role played by the nature of the coupling and reveal a rich interplay between symmetry and resonance effects in the dynamics of thermalization.
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Understanding how quantum systems equilibrate is a fundamental question with implications for quantum technologies, such as state preparation for quantum computing. However, linear response theory fails to explain the thermal relaxation of far-from-equilibrium classical and quantum systems. In this context, recent studies have reported a relaxation asymmetry, where heating is faster than cooling for initial states that are thermodynamically equidistant from equilibrium, but understanding how quantum resources affect this asymmetry is still an open question. In this work, we investigate the heating and cooling asymmetry in discrete and continuous-variable quantum systems. For the discrete case, we study two interacting qubits coupled to a global bosonic bath, focusing on the effects of initial coherences, steady state correlations generated by the dynamics and local non-Markovianity. For the continuous case, we consider Gaussian states and compare the thermal relaxation asymmetry of displaced and squeezed states. Our results for the discrete case indicate that non-Markovianity may accelerate thermal relaxation, while the initial coherences do not change the equilibration time. In Gaussian systems, applying the displacement operator in the initial states does not affect the asymmetry, but applying the squeezing operator reduces the asymmetry. Additionally, we show an invertion of the asymmetry, making cooling faster than heating, by squeezing the hotter state and displacing the cooler state.
It is known that under particular hypotheses anomalous thermalization processes can occur, such as the Mpemba effect, consisting in a faster cooling down when the system is prepared in a hotter initial condition, thus making convenient to warm up the system before the freezing process in order to make it freeze in a shorter time. It is shown here that the action of a Markovian classical noise during the freezing process can accelerate the approach to the zero-temperature thermal state. This prediction is counterintuitive, especially after observing that a classical noise can be considered equivalent to the action of an infinite-temperature reservoir, since both drive the system toward the same state. These facts lead to the statement that warming up the system during the contact with a low-temperature reservoir can accelerate the cooling process.
Quantum entanglement in mechanical systems is not only a key signature of macroscopic quantum effects but has wide applications in quantum technologies. Here we propose an effective approach for creating strong steady-state entanglement between two directly coupled mechanical oscillators (or a mechanical oscillator and a microwave resonator) in a modulated optomechanical system. The entanglement is achieved by combining the processes of a cavity cooling and the two-mode parametric interaction, which can surpass the bound on the maximal stationary entanglement from the two-mode parametric interaction. In principle, our proposal allows one to cool the system from an initial thermal state to an entangled state with high purity by a monochromatic driving laser. Also, the obtained entangled state can be used to implement the continuous-variable teleportation with high fidelity. Moreover, our proposal is robust against the thermal fluctuations of the mechanical modes under the condition of strong optical pumping.