One qubit and one photon -- the simplest polaritonic heat engine

TL;DR

This paper proposes a minimal polaritonic heat engine using a single qubit and photon, demonstrating work extraction from thermal microwave fields and analyzing measurement back-action effects.

Contribution

It introduces the simplest polaritonic heat engine model with a single qubit and photon, and explores work extraction and measurement impacts.

Findings

Engine can extract work from thermal microwave fields.

Proposed quantum measurement scheme for work detection.

Analyzed back-action effects on engine operation.

Abstract

Hybrid quantum systems can often be described in terms of polaritons. These are quasiparticles formed of superpositions of their constituents, with relative weights depending on some control parameter in their interaction. In many cases, these constituents are coupled to reservoirs at different temperatures. This suggests a general approach to the realization of polaritonic heat engines where a thermodynamic cycle is realized by tuning this control parameter. Here we discuss what is arguably the simplest such engine, a single qubit coupled to a single photon. We show that this system can extract work from feeble thermal microwave fields. We also propose a quantum measurement scheme of the work and evaluate its back-action on the operation of the engine.