Optimizing Brownian heat engine with shortcut strategy

TL;DR

This paper introduces a shortcut-based optimization method for Brownian heat engines, providing a geometric framework to maximize power output across different damping regimes within finite-time cycles.

Contribution

It develops a unified geometric approach using thermodynamic length to optimize Brownian heat engines, extending previous results to general damping conditions.

Findings

Derived a tight bound on output power for Brownian heat engines.

Identified optimal control protocols with constant thermodynamic length velocity.

Generalized previous optimization results to all damping regimes.

Abstract

Shortcuts to isothermality provide a powerful method to speed up quasistatic thermodynamic processes within finite-time manipulation. We employ the shortcut strategy to design and optimize Brownian heat engines, and formulate a geometric description of the energetics with the thermodynamic length. We obtain a tight and reachable bound of the output power, which is reached by the optimal protocol to vary the control parameters with a proper constant velocity of the thermodynamic length. Our results generalize the previous optimization in the highly underdamped and the overdamped regimes to the general-damped situation, and are applicable for arbitrary finite-time cycles.