An interaction-driven heat engine enabled by atom-atom correlations

Speaker: Professor Karen Kheruntsyan
Affiliation: University of Queensland, School of Mathematics and Physics

Abstract

Quantum many-body heat engines have been the subject of growing interest in the emerging field of quantum thermodynamics. Such engines can utilize uniquely quantum many-body effects to enhance the performance of classical engine cycles, implying a quantum advantage. In this talk I will introduce and discuss the performance of a many-body Otto engine operating under a sudden interaction quench protocol, with a one-dimensional (1D) Bose gas as a working fluid. I will show how the very operation of this engine is enabled by atom-atom pair correlations in the gas. These correlations are different from those in a classical ideal gas and are the result of an interplay between quantum statistics, inter-particle interactions, and thermal fluctuations; extracting net positive work from the system without such correlations would not be possible. I will also show how the performance of the many-body Otto engine can be further enhanced by allowing particle exchange between the system and the thermal reservoirs, in addition to heat exchange. The performance of this Otto engine can be evaluated using approximate analytic or exact thermodynamic Bethe ansatz results available for the Lieb-Liniger model that describes the 1D Bose gas working fluid, but the broad conclusions that we attain here are not limited to this particular model.