The Ising critical quantum Otto engine

We study a four-stroke Otto engine whose working fluid is a quantum Ising chain. The thermodynamic cycle consists in sweeps of the transverse magnetic field occurring in thermal isolation, alternated by thermalisation strokes with reservoirs at different temperatures. The system-environment coupling is modelled in a thermodynamically consistent way by means of a nonlocal Lindblad master equation. We show that the engine may operate in four different operation modes, depending on the various parameters, in particular it can act as a heat engine and as a refrigerator. We detect an enhancement of the thermodynamic performance as the critical point is crossed, and investigate it in detail.

Automated summary

We study a four-stroke Otto engine with a quantum Ising chain as the working fluid. The thermodynamic cycle consists of sweeps of the transverse magnetic field and thermalisation strokes with reservoirs at different temperatures. The system-environment coupling is modelled using a nonlocal Lindblad master equation. We find that the engine can operate in four different modes and exhibit enhanced thermodynamic performance near the critical point.