Patrick Potts

Lund University

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Monday Oct 19, 2020 / 15:00-16:00 CEST

Probabilistically violating the first law of thermodynamics in a quantum heat engine

At the nanoscale, thermodynamic concepts including entropy, work, and heat, become fluctuating quantities. Their description requires new rules that go beyond the standard laws of thermodynamics. A striking example is given by probabilistic violations of the second law, which are possible since entropy only has to increase on average. For classical systems, the first law of thermodynamics is ensured to hold even on the level of probabilities due to energy conservation. In quantum systems however, separating energy into heat and work may imply that these quantities cannot be known simultaneously. A description of their fluctuations will then result in probabilistic violations of the first law. Here we investigate such violations with a detailed case study, based on a thermoelectric heat engine that relies on photo-assisted Cooper pair tunneling.
Authors: Timo Kerremans, Peter Samuelsson, Patrick P. Potts