A photonic engine fueled by quantum-correlated atoms

TL;DR

This paper explores how quantum-correlated atoms can serve as a non-thermal reservoir to operate a photonic quantum engine, revealing that non-maximally entangled states can enhance efficiency and work output.

Contribution

It demonstrates that non-maximally entangled superradiant states improve quantum engine performance, unlike maximally entangled Bell states, offering new insights into quantum heat engine design.

Findings

Maximally entangled Bell states do not enhance work extraction without additional populations.

Non-maximally entangled superradiant states achieve high efficiency and work output.

Subradiant states yield negligible work due to lack of emitted photons.

Abstract

Entangled states are an important resource for quantum information processing and for the fundamental understanding of quantum physics. An intriguing open question would be whether entanglement can improve the performance of quantum heat engines in particular. One of the promising platforms to address this question is to use entangled atoms as a non-thermal bath for cavity photons, where the cavity mirror serves as a piston of the engine. Here we theoretically investigate a photonic quantum engine operating under an effective reservoir consisting of quantum-correlated pairs of atoms. We find that maximally entangled Bell states alone do not help extract useful work from the reservoir unless some extra populations in the excited states or ground states are taken into account. Furthermore, high efficiency and work output are shown for the non-maximally entangled superradiant state, while negligible for the subradiant state due to lack of emitted photons inside the cavity. Our results provide insights in the role of quantum-correlated atoms in a photonic engine and present new opportunities in designing a better quantum heat engine.