We examine a quantum absorption refrigerator that comprises three qubits, each of which is connected with a separate spin-star environment, with the three qubit-bath units coupled through an effective six-body interaction. The refrigerator exhibits the feature of transient cooling, i.e., lowering of the temperature of the first qubit in sufficiently small timescales, rather than steady-state refrigeration. A key advantage of our model is that the symmetries of the Hamiltonian enable a semi-analytic solution of the reduced density matrices of the refrigerator qubits, even in the presence of a large number of environmental spins. We derive the condition for autonomous refrigeration and analyze how the optimal cold-qubit temperature scales with the number of bath spins. We find a power-law scaling towards a constant asymptotic value. We also find the scaling of the minimum time required for optimal cooling as a function of the number of bath spins. Furthermore, we quantify the non-Markovianity of the cold-qubit dynamics using a restricted Breuer-Laine-Piilo information-backflow measure and observe that stronger backflow correlates with lower transient minimum temperatures across the sampled parameter regime. The transient-cooling performance is found to be robust under broad parameter variations. Compared to a conventional Markovian three-qubit refrigerator, the CSQAR achieves lower cold-qubit temperatures on shorter timescales. We further analyze the heat currents associated with the three qubits and their respective baths.
We examine a quantum absorption refrigerator that comprises three qubits, each of which is connected with a separate spin-star environment, with the three qubit-bath units coupled through an effective six-body interaction. The refrigerator exhibits the feature of transient cooling, i.e., lowering of the temperature of the first qubit in sufficiently small timescales, rather than steady-state refrigeration. A key advantage of our model is that the symmetries of the Hamiltonian enable a semi-analytic solution of the reduced density matrices of the refrigerator qubits, even in the presence of a large number of environmental spins. We derive the condition for autonomous refrigeration and analyze how the optimal cold-qubit temperature scales with the number of bath spins. We find a power-law scaling towards a constant asymptotic value. We also find the scaling of the minimum time required for optimal cooling as a function of the number of bath spins. Furthermore, we quantify the non-Markovianity of the cold-qubit dynamics using a restricted Breuer-Laine-Piilo information-backflow measure and observe that stronger backflow correlates with lower transient minimum temperatures across the sampled parameter regime. The transient-cooling performance is found to be robust under broad parameter variations. Compared to a conventional Markovian three-qubit refrigerator, the CSQAR achieves lower cold-qubit temperatures on shorter timescales. We further analyze the heat currents associated with the three qubits and their respective baths.
We explore a small quantum refrigerator consisting of three qubits, each of which is kept in contact with an environment. We consider two settings: one is when there is necessarily transient cooling and the other is when both steady-state and transient coolings prevail. Our primary focus, however, is on the transient cooling phenomena. We show that in the transient regime, the temperature of the cold qubit can decrease further compared to the case where all qubits are connected to Markovian environments, by replacing the environment attached to the cold qubit with a finite-size spin environment, modeled by a few quantum spins interacting with the cold qubit. We also consider refrigeration with more than one finite-size spin environment of the three-qubit refrigerating device. As expected, a steady temperature is reached only if there are at least two Markovian baths, regardless of whether the cold qubit is attached to an environment. However, distinct envelopes of temperature oscillations are observed in all cases. We investigate the effects of the finite-size environments on the cooling of the cold qubit when one, two, or all Markovian baths are replaced by finite-size environments. Additionally, we examine this effect in two- and single-qubit self-sustained devices connected to one or more finite-size environments. In deriving the dynamical equations for the qubits connected to finite-size environments, we made no assumptions about the Markovian nature of the environment. As a result, these finite-size environments inherently exhibit information backflow from the environment to the system, a hallmark of non-Markovianity. Hence, we propose a witness to detect non-Markovianity in such systems. Finally, the cooling processes are studied in presence of Markovian noise, and we analyze the response on the refrigeration of the noise strength. In particular, we find the noise strength until which refrigeration remains possible.
We show that quantum absorption refrigerators, which have traditionally been studied as of three qubits, each of which is connected to a thermal reservoir, can also be constructed by using three qubits and two thermal baths, where two of the qubits, including the qubit to be locally cooled, are connected to a common bath. With a careful choice of the system, bath, and qubit-bath interaction parameters within the Born-Markov and rotating-wave approximations, one of the qubits attached to the common bath achieves a cooling in the steady state. We observe that the proposed refrigerator may also operate in a parameter regime where no or negligible steady-state cooling is achieved, but there is considerable transient cooling. The steady-state temperature can be lowered significantly by an increase in the strength of the few-body interaction terms existing due to the use of the common bath in the refrigerator setup. The proposed refrigerator built with three qubits and two baths is shown to provide steady-state cooling for both Markovian qubit-bath interactions between the qubits and canonical bosonic thermal reservoirs, and a simpler reset model for the qubit-bath interactions.
A small quantum absorption refrigerator, consisting of three qubits, is discussed in the transient regime. We discuss time scales for coherent dynamics, damping, and approach to the steady state, and we study cooling and entanglement. We observe that cooling can be enhanced in the transient regime, in the sense that lower temperatures can be achieved compared to the steady-state regime. This is a consequence of coherent dynamics but can occur even when this dynamics is strongly damped by the dissipative thermal environment, and we note that precise control over couplings or timing is not needed to achieve enhanced cooling. We also show that the amount of entanglement present in the refrigerator can be much larger in the transient regime compared to the steady state. These results are of relevance to future implementations of quantum thermal machines.
We show that it is possible to construct a quantum absorption refrigerator that provides refrigeration only in the transient regime, by using three interacting qubits, each of which is also interacting with a local heat bath. Though the machine does not provide any effective cooling in the steady state, significant cooling of a qubit can be achieved much before the system reaches its steady state. We also demonstrate a scenario where the temperature of the qubit that has to be cooled, decreases monotonically to its minimum steady-state temperature. This facilitates bypassing of precise time control in cooling. We study the behaviour of the ratio of the heat currents of the machine for both the scenarios. The results remain qualitatively unchanged for different models of thermal baths. We also comment on the temporal behaviour of bipartite and multipartite quantum correlations present in the system, when transient cooling without steady-state cooling takes place.
The rate of temperature decrease of a cooled quantum bath is studied as its temperature is reduced to absolute zero. The third law of thermodynamics is then quantified dynamically by evaluating the characteristic exponent ζ of the cooling process dT(t)/dt∼-T^{ζ} when approaching absolute zero, T→0. A continuous model of a quantum refrigerator is employed consisting of a working medium composed either by two coupled harmonic oscillators or two coupled two-level systems. The refrigerator is a nonlinear device merging three currents from three heat baths: a cold bath to be cooled, a hot bath as an entropy sink, and a driving bath which is the source of cooling power. A heat-driven refrigerator (absorption refrigerator) is compared to a power-driven refrigerator. When optimized, both cases lead to the same exponent ζ, showing a lack of dependence on the form of the working medium and the characteristics of the drivers. The characteristic exponent is therefore determined by the properties of the cold reservoir and its interaction with the system. Two generic heat bath models are considered: a bath composed of harmonic oscillators and a bath composed of ideal Bose/Fermi gas. The restrictions on the interaction Hamiltonian imposed by the third law are discussed. In the Appendices, the theory of periodically driven open systems and its implication for thermodynamics are outlined.
Abstract We propose a model of two identical autonomous quantum refrigerators that interact through their qubits coupled to cold thermal baths. We consider the same specific disposition for each refrigerator related to a three-level system coupled to different thermal baths and, in turn, to a qubit as the object to be cooled. By coupling the two systems, we show that under certain conditions on the model parameters, the devices can operate in the regime of an independent autonomous quantum refrigerator or be subject to an adjustment of the thermodynamic performances. We further investigate the correlations induced by the interaction between the two refrigerators, and illustrate their behavior with respect to their thermodynamic performances. We have found that adjusting the different interaction constants of the model can lead to an evolution of the quantum correlations of the two machines that is inversely related to the behavior of the thermodynamic quantities of both refrigerators. However, this is not necessarily the case when the temperatures of the model are considered as the reference parameters.