Dissipation-induced collective advantage of a quantum thermal machine

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a shared environment can induce beneficial quantum correlations in a two-oscillator quantum heat engine, enhancing performance beyond independent engines, especially under strong dissipation conditions.

Contribution

It reveals how dissipation-induced correlations in a simple quantum system can improve heat engine efficiency and power, extending optimization to non-Markovian regimes.

Findings

Shared environment mediates beneficial quantum correlations.

Enhanced performance under strong dissipation.

Optimization confirms advantages in non-Markovian regimes.

Abstract

Do quantum correlations lead to better performance with respect to several different systems working independently? For quantum thermal machines, the question is whether a working medium (WM) made of $N$ constituents exhibits better performance than $N$ independent engines working in parallel. Here, by inspecting a microscopic model with the WM composed by two non-interacting quantum harmonic oscillators, we show that the presence of a common environment can mediate non-trivial correlations in the WM leading to better quantum heat engine performance -- maximum power and efficiency -- with respect to an independent configuration. Furthermore, this advantage is striking for strong dissipation, a regime in which two independent engines cannot deliver any useful power. Our results show that dissipation can be exploited as a useful resource for quantum thermal engines, and are corroborated by optimization techniques here extended to non-Markovian quantum heat engines.