Heat-to-work conversion by exploiting full or partial correlations of quantum particles

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how pairwise correlations, including quantum entanglement, can be exploited to convert heat into work, revealing an explicit link between information and work in quantum systems.

Contribution

It introduces a method to convert heat into work using both classical and quantum correlations, highlighting the role of entanglement and correlation degree in work extraction.

Findings

Work per particle is twice as large with entanglement compared to classical correlations.

Work amount depends on the entropy defect of the initial state.

Quantum entanglement leads to correlation-independent work extraction.

Abstract

It is shown how information contained in the pairwise correlations (in general, partial) between atoms of a gas can be used to completely convert heat taken from a thermostat into mechanical work in a process of relaxation of the system to its thermal equilibrium state. Both classical correlations and quantum correlations (entanglement) are considered. The amount of heat converted into work is proportional to the entropy defect of the initial state of the system. For fully correlated particles, in the case of entanglement the amount of work obtained per particle is twice as large as in the case of classical correlations. However, in the case of entanglement, the amount of work does not depend on the degree of correlation, in contrast to the case of classical correlations. The results explicitly demonstrate the equivalence relation between information and work for the case of two-particle correlations.