A Landau-Zener Lindblad equation and work extraction from coherences

TL;DR

This paper derives a Lindblad-form quantum master equation for driven systems coupled to reservoirs, demonstrating that quantum coherences enable work extraction from thermal reservoirs, validated by numerical comparisons.

Contribution

It introduces a Landau-Zener-based approximation leading to a Lindblad master equation that highlights the role of coherences in work extraction.

Findings

Coherences enable work extraction from thermal reservoirs.

The Landau-Zener approximation accurately models system dynamics.

Numerical validation confirms the theoretical approach.

Abstract

We show that the dynamics of a driven quantum system weakly coupled to a finite reservoir can be approximated by a sequence of Landau-Zener transitions if the level spacing of the reservoir is large enough. This approximation can be formulated as a repeated interaction dynamics and leads to a quantum master equation for the driven system which is of Lindblad form. The approach is validated by comparison with the numerically exact full system dynamics. To emphasize the role of coherence in the master equation, we propose a model-system which shows that in its presence, work can be extracted from a thermal reservoir while if the coherences vanish no work can be extracted.