Enabling the self-contained refrigerator to work beyond its limits by filtering the reservoir

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that filtering specific modes of thermal reservoirs can enhance the efficiency and operational range of a quantum self-contained refrigerator in the strong internal coupling regime, surpassing limitations of weak coupling.

Contribution

It introduces reservoir filtering as a method to improve quantum refrigerator performance under strong internal coupling conditions.

Findings

Filtering reservoir modes enhances efficiency.

Background reservoirs can hinder refrigerator operation.

Strong internal coupling benefits from reservoir engineering.

Abstract

In this paper, we study the quantum self-contained refrigerator [N. Linden, S. Popescu and P. Skrzypczyk, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{105}, 130401 (2010)] in the strong internal coupling regime with engineered reservoirs. We find that if some modes of the three thermal reservoirs can be properly filtered out, the efficiency and the working domain of the refrigerator can be improved in contrast to the those in the weak internal coupling regime, which indicates one advantage of the strong internal coupling. In addition, we find that the background natural vacuum reservoir could cause the filtered refrigerator to stop working and the background natural thermal reservoir could greatly reduce the cooling efficiency.