Quantum Thermal Machines Fuelled by Vacuum Forces

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum thermal machine powered by vacuum Casimir forces between nanomechanical resonators, utilizing polaritons for energy transfer, achieving high efficiency for nanotechnological temperature control.

Contribution

It presents a novel quantum thermal machine design driven by Casimir interactions and polaritons, with demonstrated high efficiency due to strong coupling and membrane stiffness differences.

Findings

High efficiency achieved in the proposed quantum thermal machine.

Strong coupling and membrane stiffness differences enhance performance.

Potential applications in sensitive nanomechanical temperature control.

Abstract

We propose a quantum thermal machine composed of two nanomechanical resonators (NMR) (two membranes suspended over a trench in a substrate), placed a few $\mu$m from each other. The quantum thermodynamical cycle is powered by the Casimir interaction between the resonators and the working fluid is the polariton resulting from the mixture of the flexural (out-of-plane) vibrations. With the help of piezoelectric cells, we select and sweep the polariton frequency cyclically. We calculate the performance of the proposed quantum thermal machines and show that high efficiencies are achieved thanks to (i) the strong coupling between the resonators and (ii) the large difference between the membrane stiffnesses. Our findings can be of particular importance for applications in nanomechanical technologies where a sensitive control of temperature is needed.