Optimal thermal refrigerator

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a quantum refrigerator model with two interacting n-level systems, optimizing the trade-off between heat transfer power and efficiency, and derives bounds on efficiency analogous to classical thermodynamics.

Contribution

It introduces an optimized quantum refrigerator model with bounds on efficiency, including a Curzon-Ahlborn-like lower bound, and explores the effects of system size and energy spectrum homogeneity.

Findings

Efficiency bounded between Curzon-Ahlborn and Carnot limits.

Optimal efficiency achieved in the macroscopic limit with large system size.

Homogeneous spectra constraint yields exact Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency.

Abstract

We study a refrigerator model which consists of two $n$-level systems interacting via a pulsed external field. Each system couples to its own thermal bath at temperatures $T_h$ and $T_c$, respectively ($\theta\equiv T_c/T_h<1$). The refrigerator functions in two steps: thermally isolated interaction between the systems driven by the external field and isothermal relaxation back to equilibrium. There is a complementarity between the power of heat transfer from the cold bath and the efficiency: the latter nullifies when the former is maximized and {\it vice versa}. A reasonable compromise is achieved by optimizing over the inter-system interaction and intra-system energy levels the product of the heat-power and efficiency. The efficiency is then found to be bounded from below by $\zeta_{\rm CA}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-\theta}}-1$ (an analogue of Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency for refrigerators), besides being bound from above by the Carnot efficiency $\zeta_{\rm C} = \frac{1}{1-\theta}-1$. The lower bound is reached in the equilibrium limit $\theta\to 1$, while the Carnot bound is reached (for a finite power and a finite amount of heat transferred per cycle) in the macroscopic limit $\ln n\gg 1$. The efficiency is exactly equal to $\zeta_{\rm CA}$, when the above optimization is constrained by assuming homogeneous energy spectra for both systems.