Steady-state work extraction from two coupled qubits embedded within equilibrium and non-equilibrium reservoirs

TL;DR

This paper investigates the steady-state ergotropy of two coupled qubits interacting with equilibrium and non-equilibrium bosonic and fermionic reservoirs, revealing how reservoir properties influence work extraction efficiency.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of how equilibrium and non-equilibrium environments affect quantum work extraction from coupled qubits, including effects of asymmetry.

Findings

Reservoir temperature and interaction strength reduce ergotropy in equilibrium bosonic environments.

Fermionic reservoirs' ergotropy increases monotonically with chemical potential.

Temperature differences in non-equilibrium bosonic reservoirs decrease ergotropy.

Abstract

Work extraction is a fundamental aspect in thermodynamics. In the context of quantum physics, ergotropy quantifies the maximum amount of work that can be obtained from quantum system through cyclic unitary process. In this work, the steady-state ergotropy of two coupled qubit, each interacting locally with its individual boson or fermion reservoir, will be examined. In this work, both equilibrium and non-equilibrium scenarios for bosonic and fermionic environments interacting with the qubits will be considered. In scenarios where two coupled qubits embedded within equilibrium boson reservoirs, it has been observed that the temperature of the reservoirs and the inter-qubits interaction strangth act as detrimental factors in work extraction. In the case of fermionic equilibrium reservoirs, it will be observed that ergotropy grows monotonically with the reservoirs chemical potential. In the non-equilibrium boson reservoirs, the temperature difference between the two reservoirs is a destructive factor for ergotropy. In non-equilibrium fermion reservoirs, the situation is somewhat more complicated. For r base chemical potential values that are smaller than the qubit transition frequency, the behavior of ergotropy is non-monotonic. However, for base chemical potential values that are larger than the transition frequency, ergotropy grows monotonically with the reservoirs chemical potential difference. Also, we study the situation in which the coupled qubits are asymmetric. It is observed that the maximum work will be extracted in the situation where the coupled qubits within both boson and fermion reservoirs be symmetric .