Mechanical Equivalent of Quantum Heat Engines

Jacques Arnaud (1) , Laurent Chusseau (1, 2) , Fabrice Philippe (3)

1 IES - Institut d’Electronique et des Systèmes
2 RADIAC - Radiations et composants
3 ARITH - Arithmétique informatique

Quantum heat engines employ as working agents multilevel systems instead of classical gases. We show that under some conditions quantum heat engines are equivalent to a series of reservoirs at different altitudes containing balls of various weights. A cycle consists of picking up at random a ball from one reservoir and carrying it to the next, thereby performing or absorbing some work. In particular, quantum heat engines, employing two-level atoms as working agents, are modeled by reservoirs containing balls of weight 0 or 1. The mechanical model helps us prove that the maximum efficiency of quantum heat engines is the Carnot effi- ciency. Heat pumps and negative temperatures are considered.

Domaines: Modélisation et simulation; Mécanique statistique [cond-mat.stat-mech]; Physique Quantique [quant-ph]

Jacques Arnaud, Laurent Chusseau, Fabrice Philippe. Mechanical Equivalent of Quantum Heat Engines. Physical Review E : Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 2008, 77, pp.061102. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevE.77.061102⟩. ⟨lirmm-00363624⟩