Extracting work from a single heat bath via vanishing quantum coherence |
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| Authors: | Scully Marlan O Zubairy M Suhail Agarwal Girish S Walther Herbert |
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| Institution: | Department of Physics and Institute for Quantum Studies, Texas A&M University, TX 77843, USA. |
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| Abstract: | We present here a quantum Carnot engine in which the atoms in the heat bath are given a small bit of quantum coherence. The induced quantum coherence becomes vanishingly small in the high-temperature limit at which we operate and the heat bath is essentially thermal. However, the phase phi, associated with the atomic coherence, provides a new control parameter that can be varied to increase the temperature of the radiation field and to extract work from a single heat bath. The deep physics behind the second law of thermodynamics is not violated; nevertheless, the quantum Carnot engine has certain features that are not possible in a classical engine. |
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