arXiv subjects

Norton G. de Almeida

Publications and source records attributed to Norton G. de Almeida.

27 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Negative temperature is cool for cooling

In this work, we study an autonomous refrigerator composed of three qubits [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 130401 (2010)] operating with one of the reservoirs at negative temperatures, which has the purpose of cooling one of the qubits. We find the values of the lowest possible temperature that the qubit of interest reaches when fixing the relevant parameters, and we also study the limit for cooling the qubit arbitrarily close to absolute zero. We thus proceed to a comparative study showing that reservoirs at effective negative temperatures are more powerful than those at positive temperatures for cooling the qubit of interest.

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arXiv2021

A comment on a possible inadequacy of new redefinitions of heat and work in quantum thermodynamics

We analyze the new redefinitions of heat Q and work W recently presented in [arXiv: 1912.01939; arXiv:1912.01983v5] in the quantum thermodynamics domain. According to these redefinitions, heat must be associated with the variation of entropy, while work must be associated with variation of state vectors. Analyzing the behavior of two specific examples, we show some peculiarities of these new redefinitions which, based on the counterexample presented, seems to point to a possible inadequacy of these redefinitions.

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arXiv2021

Quantum Otto Thermal Machines Powered by Kerr Nonlinearity

We study the effect of Kerr nonlinearity in quantum thermal machines having a Kerr-nonlinear oscillator as working substance and operating under the ideal quantum Otto cycle. We first investigate the efficiency of a Kerr-nonlinear heat engine and show that by varying the Kerr-nonlinear strength the efficiency surpasses in up to 2.5 times the efficiency of a quantum harmonic oscillator Otto engine. Moreover, the Kerr-nonlinearity makes the coefficient of performance of the Kerr-nonlinear refrigerator to be as large as 3 times the performance of quantum harmonic oscillator Otto refrigerators. These results were obtained using realistic parameters from circuit quantum electrodynamics devices formed by superconducting circuits and operating in the microwave regime.

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arXiv2020

Two-level quantum Otto heat engine operating with unit efficiency far from the quasi-static regime under a squeezed reservoir

Recent theoretical and experimental studies in quantum heat engines show that, in the quasi-static regime, it is possible to have higher efficiency than the limit imposed by Carnot, provided that engineered reservoirs are used. The quasi-static regime, however, is a strong limitation to the operation of heat engines, since infinitely long time is required to complete a cycle. In this paper we propose a two-level model as the working substance to perform a quantum Otto heat engine surrounded by a cold thermal reservoir and a squeezed hot thermal reservoir. Taking advantage of this model we show a striking achievement, that is to attain unity efficiency even at non null power.

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arXiv2020

Universal two-level quantum Otto machine under a squeezed reservoir

We study an Otto heat machine whose working substance is a single two-level system interacting with a cold thermal reservoir and with a squeezed hot thermal reservoir. By adjusting the squeezing or the adiabaticity parameter (the probability of transition) we show that our two-level system can function as a universal heat machine, either producing net work by consuming heat or consuming work that is used to cool or heat environments. Using our model we study the performance of these machine in the finite-time regime of the isentropic strokes, which is a regime that contributes to make them useful from a practical point of view.

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arXiv2020

Reservoir engineering with arbitrary temperatures for spin systems and quantum thermal machine with maximum efficiency

Abstract Reservoir engineering is an important tool for quantum information science and quantum thermodynamics since it allows for preparing and/or protecting special quantum states of single or multipartite systems or to investigate fundamental questions of the thermodynamics as quantum thermal machines and their efficiencies. Here we employ this technique to engineer reservoirs with arbitrary (effective) negative and positive temperatures for a single spin system. To this end, we firstly engineer an appropriate interaction between a qubit system, a carbon nuclear spin, to a fermionic reservoir, in our case a large number of hydrogen nuclear spins that acts as the spins bath. This carbon-hydrogen structure is present in a polycrystalline adamantane, which was used in our experimental setup. The required interaction engineering is achieved by applying a specific sequence of radio-frequency pulses using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), while the temperature of the bath can be controlled by appropriate preparation of the initial hydrogen nuclear spin state, being the predicted results in very good agreement with the experimental data. As an application we implemented a single qubit quantum thermal machine which operates at a single reservoir at effective negative temperature whose efficiency is always 100%, independent of the unitary transformation performed on the qubit system, as long as it changes the qubit state.

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arXiv2019

Efficiency of a quantum Otto heat engine operating under a reservoir at effective negative temperatures

Abstract We perform an experiment in which a quantum heat engine works under two reservoirs, one at a positive spin temperature and the other at an effective negative spin temperature i.e., when the spin system presents population inversion. We show that the efficiency of this engine can be greater than that when both reservoirs are at positive temperatures. We also demonstrate the counter-intuitive result that the Otto efficiency can be beaten only when the quantum engine is operating in the finite-time mode.

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arXiv2018

Quantum work for sudden quenches in Gaussian random Hamiltonians

In the context of nonequilibrium quantum thermodynamics, variables like work behave stochastically. A particular definition of the work probability density function (pdf) for coherent quantum processes allows the verification of the quantum version of the celebrated fluctuation theorems, due to Jarzynski and Crooks, that apply when the system is driven away from an initial equilibrium thermal state. Such a particular pdf depends basically on the details of the initial and final Hamiltonians, on the temperature of the initial thermal state and on how some external parameter is changed during the coherent process. Using random matrix theory we derive a simple analytic expression that describes the general behavior of the work characteristic function $G(u)$, associated with this particular work pdf for sudden quenches, valid for all the traditional Gaussian ensembles of Hamiltonians matrices. This formula well describes the general behavior of $G(u)$ calculated from single draws of the initial and final Hamiltonians in all ranges of temperatures.

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arXiv2008

On a heuristic point of view related to quantum nonequilibrium statistical mechanics

In this paper I propose a new way for counting the microstates of a system out of equilibrium. As, according to quantum mechanics, things happen as if a given particle can be found in more than one state at once, I extend this concept to propose the coherent access by a particle to the available states of a system. By coherent access I mean the possibility for the particle to act as if it is populating more than one microstate at once. This hypothesis has experimental implications, since the thermodynamical probability and, as a consequence, the Bose-Einstein distribution as well as the argument of the Boltzmann factor is modified.

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