Quantum heat engine operating between thermal and spin reservoirs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel optical heat engine that operates between a thermal and a spin reservoir, utilizing quantum principles to function without waste heat and surpassing traditional Carnot engine limitations.

Contribution

It proposes a new type of quantum heat engine that leverages spin angular momentum and thermal reservoirs, expanding the possibilities of heat engine configurations.

Findings

Engine operates with a single thermal and a spin reservoir.

It functions without producing waste heat.

It surpasses traditional Carnot engine constraints.

Abstract

Landauer's erasure principle is a cornerstone of thermodynamics and information theory. According to this principle, erasing information incurs a minimum energy cost. Recently, Vaccaro and Barnett [Proc. R. Soc {\bf 467}, 1770 (2011)] explored information erasure in the context of multiple conserved quantities and showed that the erasure cost can be solely in terms of spin angular momentum. As Landauer's erasure principle plays a fundamental role in heat engines, their result considerably widens the possible configurations that heat engines can have. Motivated by this, we propose here a novel optical heat engine that operates under a single thermal reservoir and a spin angular momentum reservoir coupled to a three level system with an energy-degenerate ground state. The proposed heat engine operates without producing waste heat and goes beyond the traditional Carnot engine where the working fluid is subjected to two thermal baths at different temperatures.