Deffner Sebastian
Department of Physics, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA.
Entropy (Basel). 2018 Nov 15;20(11):875. doi: 10.3390/e20110875.
Recent experimental breakthroughs produced the first nano heat engines that have the potential to harness quantum resources. An instrumental question is how their performance measures up against the efficiency of classical engines. For single ion engines undergoing quantum Otto cycles it has been found that the efficiency at maximal power is given by the Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency. This is rather remarkable as the Curzon-Alhbron efficiency was originally derived for endoreversible Carnot cycles. Here, we analyze two examples of endoreversible Otto engines within the same conceptual framework as Curzon and Ahlborn's original treatment. We find that for endoreversible Otto cycles in classical harmonic oscillators the efficiency at maximal power is, indeed, given by the Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency. However, we also find that the efficiency of Otto engines made of quantum harmonic oscillators is significantly larger.
最近的实验突破产生了首批有潜力利用量子资源的纳米热机。一个关键问题是它们的性能与经典热机的效率相比如何。对于经历量子奥托循环的单离子热机，已发现最大功率下的效率由柯尔佐 - 阿尔伯恩效率给出。这相当引人注目，因为柯尔佐 - 阿尔伯恩效率最初是为内可逆卡诺循环推导出来的。在此，我们在与柯尔佐和阿尔伯恩的原始处理相同的概念框架内分析两个内可逆奥托热机的例子。我们发现，对于经典谐振子中的内可逆奥托循环，最大功率下的效率确实由柯尔佐 - 阿尔伯恩效率给出。然而，我们还发现由量子谐振子制成的奥托热机的效率明显更高。
