The derivation of general performance benchmarks is important in the design of highly optimized heat engines and refrigerators. To obtain them, one may model phenomenologically the leading sources of irreversibility ending up with results that are model independent, but limited in scope. Alternatively, one can take a simple physical system realizing a thermodynamic cycle and assess its optimal operation from a complete microscopic description. We follow this approach in order to derive the coefficient of performance at maximum cooling rate for any endoreversible quantum refrigerator. At striking variance with the universality of the optimal efficiency of heat engines, we find that the cooling performance at maximum power is crucially determined by the details of the specific system-bath interaction mechanism. A closed analytical benchmark is found for endoreversible refrigerators weakly coupled to unstructured bosonic heat baths: an ubiquitous case study in quantum thermodynamics.
The derivation of general performance benchmarks is important in the design of highly optimized heat engines and refrigerators. To obtain them, one may model phenomenologically the leading sources of irreversibility ending up with results that are model independent, but limited in scope. Alternatively, one can take a simple physical system realizing a thermodynamic cycle and assess its optimal operation from a complete microscopic description. We follow this approach in order to derive the coefficient of performance at maximum cooling rate for any endoreversible quantum refrigerator. At striking variance with the universality of the optimal efficiency of heat engines, we find that the cooling performance at maximum power is crucially determined by the details of the specific system-bath interaction mechanism. A closed analytical benchmark is found for endoreversible refrigerators weakly coupled to unstructured bosonic heat baths: an ubiquitous case study in quantum thermodynamics.
The study of nanoscopic thermal devices attracts an increasing attention, not only because of their key role in understanding the emergence of thermodynamics from quantum theory, but also for the potential use of quantum-mechanical thermal cycles, especially refrigerators, in quantum technologies. This thesis, is devoted to the performance optimization of autonomous (heat-driven) refrigerators. For a quantum refrigerator, one has a full microscopic description of the simple system serving as a working medium, and of its interaction with the external heat baths. This enables a consistent `finite-time? thermodynamic analysis, not relying on any phenomenological assumptions about the leading sources of irreversibility, and allows to establish arguably general performance bounds, essential to benchmark the operation of realistic devices. In particular, tight and model-independent upper bounds for the coefficient of performance at maximum power, are derived here for a class of strongly coupled refrigerators, and seen to hold more generally for other types of heat and power-driven cycles. Remarkably, these ultimate limitations only depend on the particulars of the system-baths interaction at the interface with the object to be cooled. Strategies might be then defined so as to saturate those limits: It is shown how the working medium of the refrigerator may be, for instance, scaled up into a parallel multi-stage configuration, resembling that of macroscopic multi-effect absorption chillers, as a means to increase its cooling power. Similarly, by applying reservoir engineering techniques on selected transitions between the energy states of the working medium, one can mimic exploitable non-equilibrium fluctuations in the baths, capable of boosting the overall power and COP beyond what would be otherwise allowed by the second law of thermodynamics. In this way, heat-driven chillers could be set to compete on a equal footing with the best power-driven refrigerators.
We study the optimal performance of a three-level quantum refrigerator using two different objective functions: cooling power and χ function. For both cases, we obtain general expressions for the coefficient of performance (COP) and derive its well-known lower and upper bounds for the limiting cases when the ratio of system-bath coupling constants at the hot and cold contacts approaches infinity and zero, respectively. We also show that the cooling power can be maximized with respect to one control frequency, while χ function can be maximized globally with respect to two control frequencies. Additionally, we show that in the low-temperature regime, our model of refrigerator can be mapped to Feynman's ratchet and pawl model, a classical mesoscopic heat engine. In the parameter regime where both cooling power and χ function can be maximized, we compare the cooling power of the quantum refrigerator at maximum χ function with the maximum cooling power.
We investigate the finite-power performance of quantum heat engines working in the linear response regime where the temperature gradient is small. The engine cycles with working substances of ideal harmonic systems consist of two heat transfer and two adiabatic processes, such as the Carnot cycle, Otto cycle, and Brayton cycle. By analyzing the optimal protocol under maximum power we derive the explicitly analytic expression for the irreversible entropy production, which becomes the low dissipation form in the long duration limit. Assuming the engine to be endoreversible, we derive the universal expression for the efficiency at maximum power, which agrees well with that obtained from the phenomenological heat transfer laws holding in the classical thermodynamics. Through appropriate identification of the thermodynamic fluxes and forces that a linear relation connects, we find that the quantum engines under consideration are tightly coupled, and the universality of efficiency at maximum power is confirmed at the linear order in the temperature gradient.
We investigate the finite-time performance of a quantum endoreversible Carnot engine cycle and its inverse operation — Carnot refrigeration cycle, employing a spin-1/2 system as the working substance. The thermal machine is alternatively driven by a hot boson bath of inverse temperature β h and a cold boson bath at inverse temperature β c (>β h). While for the engine model the hot bath is constructed to be squeezed, in the refrigeration cycle the cold bath is established to be squeezed, with squeezing parameter r. We obtain the analytical expressions for both efficiency and power in heat engines and for coefficient of performance and cooling rate in refrigerators. We find that, in the high-temperature limit, the efficiency at maximum power is bounded by the analytical value η + = 1 − sech ( 2 r ) ( 1 − η C ) , and the coefficient of performance at the maximum figure of merit is limited by ε + = sech ( 2 r ) ( 1 + ε C ) sech ( 2 r ) ( 1 + ε C ) − ε C − 1 , where η C = 1 – β h/β c and ε C = β h/(β c – β h) are the respective Carnot values of the engines and refrigerators. These analytical results are identical to those obtained from the Carnot engines based on harmonic systems, indicating that the efficiency at maximum power and coefficient at maximum figure of merit are independent of the working substance.
The general performance characteristics of an irreversible quantum refrigeration cycle using many non-interacting spin-1/2 systems as the working substance and consisting of two adiabatic and two isomagnetic field processes are investigated, based on the quantum master equation and semi-group approach. Expressions for several important performance parameters such as the coefficient of performance, cooling rate and power input are derived. By using numerical solutions, the cooling rate of the refrigeration cycle subject to the finite cycle duration is optimized. The maximum cooling rate and the corresponding parameters are calculated numerically. The optimal region of the coefficient of performance and the optimal ranges of the temperatures of the working substance and the times spent on the two isomagnetic field processes are determined. Moreover, the optimal performance of the cycle in the high-temperature limit is also analysed in detail. The results obtained here are further generalized, so that they may be directly used to describe the performance of the quantum refrigeration cycle using spin- J systems as the working substance.
We study how to achieve the ultimate power in the simplest, yet non trivial, model of a thermal machine, namely a two-level quantum system coupled to two thermal baths. We find that, regardless of the microscopic details and of the operating mode of the thermal machine, the maximum power is achieved through an Otto cycle in which the controls are rapidly switched between two extremal values. A closed formula for the maximum power is derived, and the experimental feasibility of the protocol is discussed. Our findings extend the analysis done in the literature on the efficiency at maximum power (EMP) to engines operating at the ultimate performace, which is strongly away from the quasi static regime, and shed new light on the universal role of the EMP. In particular we show that by employing proper energy filters to mediate the system-baths interactions, both the EMP of heat engines and the coefficient of performance at maximum power of refrigerators can approach Carnot's bound with arbitrary accuracy.