Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Very recently considerable progress has been made in In this work we will use exactly the definition of work
understanding foundational aspects of thermodynamics put forward by Carnot, namely:
by addressing a new class of questions: whether there
exist additional fundamental limitations on thermal ma- “motive power (work) is the useful effect that a
chines, arising specifically due to their size [1]; whether motor is capable of producing. This effect can al-
there is an absolute minimum size to all thermal ma- ways be likened to the elevation of a weight to a
arXiv:1010.6029v1 [quant-ph] 28 Oct 2010
chines; alternatively, if machines are small, is their per- certain height.” [3]
formance constrained, for example can they still achieve
to construct a quantum heat engine. Our engine will
the Carnot efficiency?
produce work in the same way as above, by lifting a
For the case of refrigerators it was shown [1] that there weight; here the weight consists of a system with an in-
is no minimum size when self-contained machines con- finite number of energy levels, and the work created by
sisting of only two qubits, or a single qutrit, were dis- our heat engine causes the position of the weight to in-
covered. Furthermore it was shown that these refrigera- crease with time. We will present two models for the
tors have two important properties; they are able to cool heat engine, one consisting of two qubits (two level sys-
towards absolute zero [1] and they can operate at the tems), and a second consisting of a single qutrit (three
Carnot efficiency [2], showing that here size appears not level system). We will also show that they can operate
to limit the machines at all. at the Carnot efficiency.
One advantage in focusing initially on refrigerators
rather than heat engines is because they allowed us to
avoid the explicit notion of work in our study, whilst TWO-QUBIT MODEL
making progress in understanding small thermal ma-
chines. Work is a concept that appears difficult to cap- The heat engine consists of two qubits. Qubit 1 is in
ture in the quantum regime, where ideas such as “or- contact with a “cold” heat bath at temperature Tc and
der” usually associated to it are hard to make sense of. qubit 2 is in contact with a “hot” bath at temperature
Therefore it is not clear that the existence of small self- Th . Like every heat engine, this engine acts by extract-
contained refrigerators implies anything about small ing heat from the hot bath and converting it into work,
self-contained heat engines. while dumping some heat into the cold bath.
The study of the thermodynamics of quantum sys- We imagine that the engine delivers work by pulling
tems has become a thriving and dynamic field [4–6]. up a weight. The weight is isolated from both baths.
The definition of work has indeed been discussed exten- To simplify the situation we consider that the weight is
sively [7–9] and applied to quantum heat engines [10– pulled up very slowly, so that we can neglect the change
16] and Carnot cycles [17–22]. The focus however has of its kinetic energy and consider only the potential en-
been on quantum thermal machines which explicitly or ergy. Furthermore, we suppose that the weight can be
implicitly have macroscopic objects in the background situated only at some discrete equidistant heights, so
which supply either work or some form of control; for that the energy difference between them is the same.
example systems which are externally driven, or make Hence, the weight has discrete energy eigenstates |niw
use of sequences of unitary evolutions. The definitions with corresponding energy eigenvalues En = nE , with
of work given so far have been applicable and very well E > 0. Alternatively, we can imagine that the engine
suited to this situation. Our focus is however differ- delivers work by pumping energy into a harmonic os-
ent; we are interested here in self contained heat engines, cillator; both situations are formally almost equivalent
where there is no external work or control – the only (the harmonic oscillator energies are limited from below
external interaction being with thermal reservoirs. The by 0).
previous definitions of work therefore do not apply di- In the absence of interaction we take qubit i, i = 1, 2 to
rectly to our situation, and an alternative must be found. have energy eigenstates |0ii and |1ii and corresponding
2
obey the coupled set of equations Recall that Γ1 (t) and Γ2 (t) are the ground state popu-
lations of ρ1 (t) and ρ2 (t) respectively. The asymptotic
d
∆(t) = 2ig Γ1 (t) − Γ2 (t) − ( p1 + p2 )∆(t)
solution for these two variables is given by
dt
d p1 p2 ( p1 + p2 )ri + 2g2 ( p1 r1 + p2 r2 )
Γ1 (t) = +ig∆(t) + p1 r1 − Γ1 (t)
(14) lim Γi (t) = (18)
dt t→∞ ( p1 + p2 )(2g2 + p1 p2 )
d
Γ2 (t) = −ig∆(t) + p2 r2 − Γ2 (t)
dt Substitution of this result into (17), and making use of
This set of equations can easily be solved. The solution (1) and (7) it is found that
for ∆(t) is given by
d 2Ei g2 p1 p2 (r1 − r2 )
3 Qi = (−1)i (19)
2igp p2 (r − r2 ) dt ( p1 + p2 )(2g2 + p1 p2 )
∆(t) = ∑ δi eλi t + ( p1 + p12 )(2g12 + p1 p2 ) (15)
i =1
indicating, as expected, that heat is flowing out of qubit
where the δi are constants determined by the initial con- 1 into the ‘cold’ reservoir and is flowing into qubit 2
ditions. The eigenvalues λi are the solutions of the from the ‘hot’ reservoir. Identifying now dt d
h Ew i as the
characteristic equation (λ + p1 )(λ + p2 )(λ + p1 + p2 ) + work extracted from the engine, since this is the energy
2g2 (2λ + p1 + p2 ) = 0, and all have negative real part. which is used to raise the weight, it is seen that the effi-
The first term in (15) is therefore the transient behaviour ciency η Q of the quantum heat engine is given by
which decays in time, and thus in the long time limit
only the second term survives and ∆ becomes a con- d
dt h Ew i E2 − E1 E
stant. Thus, from equation (10), ηQ = d
= = 1− 1 (20)
E2 E2
dt Q2
d 2E g2 p1 p2 (r1 − r2 )
lim h Ew i = (16) However, for the weight to be lifted, condition (6) must
t→∞ dt ( p1 + p2 )(2g2 + p1 p2 )
be satisfied. Thus, in the limit where the speed at which
which is positive whenever r1 > r2 , which is equivalent the weight is lifted becomes infinitely slow, that is when
to q10 > q01 – the condition (6) imposed initially to en- (6) becomes an equality, the quantum fridge reaches its
sure a probability bias in the correct direction. Therefore maximum possible efficiency ηmax Q
, given by
the average energy of the weight increases linearly with
time, thus demonstrating that the weight is able to be Q Tc
continuously lifted. ηmax = 1− (21)
Th
We note however that the probability distribution of
the position of the weight, (and therefore the probabil- which is exactly the Carnot efficiency of a heat engine
ity distribution of its energy) will be expected to also running between two reservoirs at temperatures Tc and
spread in time. Essentially we expect the evolution, af- Th . Thus no new additional constraints arise due to the
ter the transient period, to be that of a biased random small size of the engine presented, with the only con-
walk. This can be confirmed to be the actual behaviour straint upon its efficiency being the Carnot limit.
of the system. A similar (but more involved) calculation
to the above shows that ∆Ew 2 goes like t in the limit that t
by p, is found to be
APPENDIX: ONE-QUTRIT MODEL DETAILS
d
lim h Ew i =
t→∞ dt In the absence of interaction, the free Hamiltonian of
4g2 E2 p(rr rh − rc rh ) the qutrit and weight is given by
2
(22)
2g (2 + rc + rr ) + 3p(3 − rc rr − rc rh − rr rh ) H0 = E1 |1i1 h1| + ( E1 + E2 )|2i1 h2| + E2 ∑ n|niw hn|
where rc , rr and rh are the ground state thermal popu- n
(24)
lations of qubits at the corresponding temperatures, de-
The qutrit and weight interact with each other via the
fined as in (4), and g is again the interaction strength.
interaction Hamiltonian
The condition that the average energy of the weight
asymptotically increases in time is now given by Hint = g ∑ |1, n + 1ih2, n| + |2, nih1, n + 1| . (25)
n
rr r h > r c r h (23)
The qutrit, due to its physical geometry, has each of its
which says that, in the thermal states, the product of transitions in contact with a different thermal reservoir.
probabilities for state |2i must exceed that of the product The transition between the states |0i and |1i is at tem-
of probabilities of state |1i. perature Tc , the transition between the states |0i and |2i
Acknowledgements We acknowledge support from is at the temperature Tr and the transition between the
EU integrated project Q-ESSENCE. states |1i and |2i is at the temperature Th . The Master
equation governing the dynamics of the qutrit interact-
ing with the environments and weight is given by
∂ρ
= −i [ H0 + Hint , ρ] (26)
[1] N. Linden, S. Popescu and P. Skrzypczyk, Phys. Rev. Lett. ∂t
105, 130401 (2010).
+ pc τc h0|ρ|0i + h1|ρ|1i + |2ih2|h2|ρ|2i − ρ
[2] P. Skrzypczyk, N. Brunner, N. Linden and S. Popescu,
arXiv:quant-ph/1009.0865
[3] S. Carnot, Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu (1824); + pr τr h0|ρ|0i + h2|ρ|2i + |1ih1|h1|ρ|1i − ρ
Reflection on the Motive Power of Fire, Dover (1960).
[4] G. Gemma, M. Michel and G. Mahler, Quantum Thermo- + ph τh h1|ρ|1i + h2|ρ|2i + |0ih0|h0|ρ|0i − ρ
dynamics, Springer (2004).
[5] E. P. Gyftopoulos and G. P. Beretta, Thermodynamics: Foun- where
dations and Applications, Dover (2005).
[6] A. E. Allahverdyan, R. Ballian and Th. M. Nieuwen-
τc = rc |0ih0| + rc |1ih1|, τr = rr |0ih0| + rr |2ih2|,
huizen, J. Mod. Opt. 51, 2703 (2004). τh = rh |1ih1| + rh |2ih2|
5
are the thermal states for each of the three transitions then together with Ω(t) they satisfy the following set of
respectively, where the ri are defined according to (4). equations
To show that the qutrit engine is also able to produce
work, the quantity of interest again is the asymptotic be-
haviour of the mean energy of the weight. From (26) it
follows that
d
d d Ω = +2ig( B2 − B1 ) − ( pc + pr + ph )Ω (30)
h Ew i = Tr( Hw ρ) = −igE2 Ω(t) (27) dt
dt dt d
B = −igΩ + pc (rc (1 − B2 ) − B1 ) − ph (rh B1 − rh B2 )
where dt 1
d
B2 = +igΩ + pr (rr (1 − B1 ) − B2 ) + ph (rh B1 − rh B2 )
Ω(t) = ∑ h2, n|ρ|1, n + 1i − h1, n + 1|ρ|2, ni (28) dt
n