Scaling-up quantum heat engines efficiently via shortcuts to adiabaticity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how shortcuts to adiabaticity can be used to scale up quantum heat engines with many particles, eliminating quantum friction and optimizing efficiency and power in finite time.

Contribution

It introduces a method to enhance many-particle quantum heat engines using shortcuts to adiabaticity, controlling nonadiabatic effects and eliminating friction.

Findings

Nonadiabatic effects can be controlled to match adiabatic performance.

Quantum friction can be eliminated in scaled-up engines.

Maximum efficiency can be achieved with tunable power output.

Abstract

The finite-time operation of a quantum heat engine that uses a single particle as a working medium generally increases the output power at the expense of inducing friction that lowers the cycle efficiency. We propose to scale up a quantum heat engine utilizing a many-particle working medium in combination with the use of shortcuts to adiabaticity to boost the nonadiabatic performance by eliminating quantum friction and reducing the cycle time. To this end, we first analyze the finite-time thermodynamics of a quantum Otto cycle implemented with a quantum fluid confined in a time-dependent harmonic trap. We show that nonadiabatic effects can be controlled and tailored to match the adiabatic performance using a variety of shortcuts to adiabaticity. As a result, the nonadiabatic dynamics of the scaled-up many-particle quantum heat engine exhibits no friction and the cycle can be run at maximum efficiency with a tunable output power. We demonstrate our results with a working medium consisting of particles with inverse-square pairwise interactions, that includes noninteracting and hard-core bosons as limiting cases.