2019/02/27 by Sourav Karar, Karar, Sourav, S. Datta +5
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #FOS: Physical sciences #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1902.10616
openalex publication_date 2019/02/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We explore a thermodynamical effect of anharmonicity in quantum mechanical oscillators. We show that small quartic perturbations to the oscillator potential lead to an enhancement of performance of quantum refrigerators for both the Otto and Stirling cycles. A similar nonlinearity driven enhancement of performance is also observed for an analogous spin-qubit model of quantum refrigerators. We further demonstrate the robustness of improvement of the coefficient of performance versus the energy cost for creating anharmonicity. It is shown that the anharmonicity driven improvement in performance is a generic effect at the quantum level for the experimentally realizable Otto refrigerator.