Shortcut-to-adiabaticity quantum Otto refrigerator

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a quantum Otto refrigerator using counterdiabatic techniques, demonstrating enhanced performance over traditional methods within certain cycle durations, and establishing performance bounds based on quantum speed limits.

Contribution

It introduces a finite-time quantum Otto refrigerator employing local counterdiabatic driving and derives performance bounds surpassing the second law.

Findings

Refrigerator outperforms conventional models for most cycle times.

Including driving costs, performance remains superior except at very short cycles.

Quantum speed limits provide tighter bounds than the second law.

Abstract

We investigate the performance of a quantum Otto refrigerator operating in finite time and exploiting local counterdiabatic techniques. We evaluate its coefficient of performance and cooling power when the working medium consists a quantum harmonic oscillator with a time-dependent frequency. We find that the quantum refrigerator outperforms its conventional counterpart, except for very short cycle times, even when the driving cost of the local counterdiabatic driving is included. We moreover derive upper bounds on the performance of the thermal machine based on quantum speed limits and show that they are tighter than the second law of thermodynamics.