Abstract We report on a single-atom energy-conversion quantum device operating as an engine, or a refrigerator, coupled to a quantum load. The ‘working fluid’ consists of the two optical levels of an ion, while the load is one of its vibrational modes, cooled down to the quantum regime. We explore two important differences with classical engines: (1) the presence of a strong generic coupling interaction between engine and load, which can induce correlations between them and (2) the use of nonthermal baths. We examine the ergotropy of the load, which indicates the maximum amount of energy of the load extractable using solely unitary operations. We show that ergotropy rises with the number of engine cycles despite an increase in the information entropy of the load. The increase of ergotropy of the load points to the possibility of using the phonon distribution of a single atom as a form of quantum battery.
Abstract We report on a single-atom energy-conversion quantum device operating as an engine, or a refrigerator, coupled to a quantum load. The ‘working fluid’ consists of the two optical levels of an ion, while the load is one of its vibrational modes, cooled down to the quantum regime. We explore two important differences with classical engines: (1) the presence of a strong generic coupling interaction between engine and load, which can induce correlations between them and (2) the use of nonthermal baths. We examine the ergotropy of the load, which indicates the maximum amount of energy of the load extractable using solely unitary operations. We show that ergotropy rises with the number of engine cycles despite an increase in the information entropy of the load. The increase of ergotropy of the load points to the possibility of using the phonon distribution of a single atom as a form of quantum battery.
Although entanglement is considered as an essential resource for quantum information processing, whether entanglement helps for energy conversion or output in the quantum regime is still lack of experimental witness. Here, we report on an energy-conversion device operating as a quantum engine with the working medium acted by two entangled ions confined in a harmonic potential. The two ions are entangled by virtually coupling to one of the vibrational modes shared by the two ions, and the quantum engine couples to a quantum load, which is another shared vibrational mode. We explore the energy conversion efficiency of the quantum engine and investigate the useful energy (i.e., the maximum extractable work) stored in the quantum load by tuning the two ions in different degrees of entanglement as well as detecting the change of the phonons in the load. Our observation provides, for the first time, quantitative evidence that entanglement fuels the useful energy produced by the quantum engine, but not helpful for the energy conversion efficiency. We consider that our results may be useful to the study of quantum batteries for which one of the most indexes is the maximum extractable energy.
We study the mechanical performance of quantum rotor heat engines in terms of common notions of work using two prototypical models: a mill driven by the heat flow from a hot to a cold mode, and a piston driven by the alternate heating and cooling of a single working mode. We evaluate the extractable work in terms of ergotropy, the kinetic energy associated to net directed rotation, as well as the intrinsic work based on the exerted torque under autonomous operation, and we compare them to the energy output for the case of an external dissipative load and for externally driven engine cycles. Our results connect work definitions from both physical and information-theoretical perspectives. In particular, we find that apart from signatures of angular momentum quantization, the ergotropy is consistent with the intuitive notion of work in the form of net directed motion. It also agrees with the energy output to an external load or agent under optimal conditions. This sets forth a consistent thermodynamical description of rotating quantum motors, flywheels, and clocks.
We investigate the energetic and thermodynamic performance of an interacting two-qubit system serving as both a quantum battery and a quantum Otto heat engine. The working medium is described by an anisotropic Heisenberg Hamiltonian supplemented by a dipolar interaction, a symmetric spin--orbit interaction, and an external magnetic field. Within a unified microscopic framework, we first analyze a coherent unitary charging protocol and characterize the resulting energy-storage performance through the ergotropy, anti-ergotropy, charging power, storage capacity, and ℓ1-norm of quantum coherence. We investigate the effects of the dipolar interaction, temperature, and magnetic field on these quantities. We then employ the same working medium in a quantum Otto cycle and study the absorbed and released heat, net work, and thermodynamic efficiency as functions of the magnetic-field modulation, dipolar interaction, and temperature bias. A direct comparison between the two protocols reveals a pronounced contrast in their response to the dipolar interaction. In the investigated parameter regime, increasing the dipolar interaction substantially enhances the maximum ergotropy and storage capacity of the quantum battery, whereas the maximum work extracted per Otto cycle decreases. The Otto efficiency exhibits a nonmonotonic dependence on the dipolar interaction while remaining below the Carnot bound. These results demonstrate that an enhancement of quantum energy-storage capability does not necessarily imply an enhancement of heat-to-work conversion. Our findings highlight the complementary nature of quantum batteries and quantum heat engines and show how microscopic spin interactions can
be used to control different forms of quantum energy conversion within
the same physical platform.
The charging of a quantum battery by a four-stroke quantum machine that works either as an engine or a refrigerator is investigated. The presented analysis provides the energetic behavior of the combined system in terms of the heat- and workflows of the machine, the average, the variance of the battery's energy, as well as the coherent and incoherent parts of its ergotropy. To monitor the battery state, its energy is measured either after the completion of any cycle or after a prescribed number of cycles is carried out. The resulting battery performances greatly differ for those two cases. During the first charging epoch with an engine, the regular measurements speed up the charging, whereas the gain of ergotropy is more pronounced in the absence of measurements. In a later stage, the engine fails to work as such, while it still continues charging the battery that eventually reaches the maximally charged state in the absence of intermediate measurements and a suboptimally charged state for a periodically measured battery. For a refrigerator, the charging of the measured battery also proceeds faster during the first epoch. Only during the second stage, when the machine fails to extract heat from the cold bath, the influence of the measurements becomes less pronounced, leading to rather similar asymptotic states for the two measurement scenarios.
Heat engines usually operate by exchanging heat with thermal baths at different (positive) temperatures. Nonthermal baths may, however, lead to a significant performance boost. We here experimentally analyze the power output of a single-atom quantum Otto engine realized in the quasi-spin states of individual Cesium atoms interacting with an atomic Rubidium bath. From measured time-resolved populations of the quasi-spin state, we determine the dynamics during the cycle of both the effective spin temperature and of the quantum fluctuations of the engine, which we quantify with the help of the Shannon entropy. We find that power is enhanced in the negative temperature regime, and that it reaches its maximum value at half the maximum entropy. Quantitatively, operating our engine at negative effective temperatures increases the power by up to 30% compared to operation at positive temperatures, including even the case of infinite temperature. At the same time, entering the negative temperature regime allows for reducing the entropy to values close to zero, offering highly stable operation at high power output. We furthermore numerically investigate the influence of the size of the Hilbert space on the performance of the quantum engine by varying the number of levels of the working medium. Our work thereby paves the way to fluctuation control in the operation of high-power and efficient single-atom quantum engines.
Heat engines usually operate by exchanging heat with thermal baths at different (positive) temperatures. Nonthermal baths may, however, lead to a significant performance boost. We here experimentally analyze the power output of a single-atom quantum Otto engine realized in the quasi-spin states of individual Cesium atoms interacting with an atomic Rubidium bath. From measured time-resolved populations of the quasi-spin state, we determine the dynamics during the cycle of both the effective spin temperature and of the quantum fluctuations of the engine, which we quantify with the help of the Shannon entropy. We find that power is enhanced in the negative temperature regime, and that it reaches its maximum value at half the maximum entropy. Quantitatively, operating our engine at negative effective temperatures increases the power by up to 30% compared to operation at positive temperatures, including even the case of infinite temperature. At the same time, entering the negative temperature regime allows for reducing the entropy to values close to zero, offering highly stable operation at high power output. We furthermore numerically investigate the influence of the size of the Hilbert space on the performance of the quantum engine by varying the number of levels of the working medium. Our work thereby paves the way to fluctuation control in the operation of high-power and efficient single-atom quantum engines.