Heat engines with single-shot deterministic work extraction

TL;DR

This paper explores nano-scale heat engines capable of deterministic work extraction, revealing fundamental irreversibility, efficiency-fluctuation trade-offs, and conditions under which Carnot efficiency can be approached with many particles.

Contribution

It introduces a model of nano heat engines with deterministic work extraction, analyzing efficiency limits, irreversibility, and the role of correlations in approaching Carnot efficiency.

Findings

Efficiency is strictly less than Carnot's due to irreversibility.

Allowing work fluctuations increases efficiency, approaching Carnot's in the limit.

Correlations among many particles enable near-Carnot efficiency with deterministic work.

Abstract

We introduce heat engines working in the nano-regime that allow to extract a finite amount of deterministic work. We show that the efficiency of these cycles is strictly smaller than Carnot's, and we associate this difference with a fundamental irreversibility that is present in single-shot transformations. When fluctuations in the extracted work are allowed there is a trade-off between their size and the efficiency. As the size of fluctuations increases so does the efficiency, and optimal efficiency is recovered for unbounded fluctuations, while certain amount of deterministic work is drawn from the cycle. Finally, we show that if the working medium is composed by many particles, by creating an amount of correlations between the subsystems that scales logarithmically with their number, Carnot's efficiency can also be approached in the asymptotic limit along with deterministic work extraction.