Strong Violation of the Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation in a Minimal Autonomous Heat Engine

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in a minimal autonomous heat engine, the thermodynamic uncertainty relation can be strongly violated, especially under deterministic control, challenging the universality of TUR constraints.

Contribution

The study provides an exactly solvable model showing TUR violations in autonomous heat engines with internal stochastic control, linking deterministic control to TUR ratio reduction.

Findings

TUR ratio can be driven arbitrarily close to zero.

Model becomes exactly solvable in the time-scale separation regime.

Violations occur near maximal current and efficiency.

Abstract

Thermodynamic uncertainty relations (TURs) impose a universal trade-off between current precision and entropy production in autonomous steady states, constraining in particular the power, efficiency, and constancy of heat engines. We demonstrate strong violations of the long-time TUR in a minimal autonomous heat engine composed of a discrete ratchet generating work against a constant bias and an underdamped harmonic oscillator acting as an internal stochastic control. In the regime of time-scale separation, the model becomes exactly solvable and yields a closed analytical expression for the TUR ratio, where the influence of the continuous degree of freedom is fully captured by the Fano factor of oscillator zero crossings. We show that increasingly deterministic internal control drives the TUR ratio arbitrarily close to zero while the engine operates near maximal current and efficiency. In an appropriate limit, the model reduces to the classical pendulum-clock system of Pietzonka, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 130606 (2022).