Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW X
Volume 10, Issue 3, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.10.031015
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Funding
- Elite Network of Bavaria
- European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant [713729]
- Spanish MINECO [QIBEQI FIS2016-80773-P, SEV-2015-0522]
- Fundacio Cellex
- Generalitat de Catalunya [SGR 1381]
- European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program [758403]
- Science Foundation Ireland
- Swiss National Science Foundation [PZ00P2-186067]
- Exploring Quantum Matter
- Generalitat de Catalunya (CERCA Programme)
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) [PZ00P2_186067] Funding Source: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)
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Isothermal transformations are minimally dissipative but slow processes, as the system needs to remain close to thermal equilibrium along the protocol. Here, we show that smoothly modifying the system-bath interaction can significantly speed up such transformations. In particular, we construct protocols where the overall dissipation W-diss decays with the total time tau(tot) of the protocol as W-diss proportional to tau(-2 alpha-1)(tot), where each value alpha > 0 can be obtained by a suitable modification of the interaction, whereas alpha = 0 corresponds to a standard isothermal process where the system-bath interaction remains constant. Considering heat engines based on such speed-ups, we show that the corresponding efficiency at maximum power interpolates between the Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency for alpha = 0 and the Carnot efficiency for alpha -> infinity. Analogous enhancements are obtained for the coefficient of performance of refrigerators. We confirm our analytical results with two numerical examples where alpha = 1/2, namely the time-dependent Caldeira-Leggett and resonant-level models, with strong system-environment correlations taken fully into account. We highlight the possibility of implementing our proposed speed-ups with ultracold atomic impurities and mesoscopic electronic devices.
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