Single-particle heatengine beyond the Carnot limit
Advances in micro- and nano-technology allow for testing concepts derived from classical thermodynamics in regimes where the underlying assumptions, such as the thermodynamic limit and thermal equilibrium, no longer hold. Single-particle heat machines provide an excellent platform to test theoretical advances in and our understanding of thermodynamics at the micro- and nano-scale. In this project, a minimalist heat engine has been realized that takes advantage of a squeezed thermal resevoir to outperform conventional heat engines. The non-equilibrium nature of these reservoirs permit work extraction from a single reservoir and engine efficiencies unbounded by the standard Carnot limit. A major open question remains whether highly miniaturized heat engines will be able to use the extracted work to accomplish mesoscopic tasks as transporting particles or manipulating biological matter.
Key publications
- J. Klaers, S. Faelt, A. Imamoglu, and E. Togan, “Squeezed thermal reservoirs as a resource for a nano-mechanical heat engine beyond the Carnot limit”, Physical Review X 7, 031044 (2017). link
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Landauer’ erasure principle in a squeezed thermal memory
Squeezed thermal reservoirs may naturally arise in pulse-driven system such as digital electronics. In a CPU, these states can be exploited to reduce the minimum required energy to perform computations (Landauer limit).
Key publications
- J. Klaers, “Landauer’s erasure principle in a squeezed thermal memory”, Physical Review Letter 122, 040602 (2019). link