2008/08/04 by Yair Rezek, Y. Rezek, P. Salamon +5 · 99 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Absolute zero #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Carnot cycle #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Harmonic oscillator #Optical properties and cooling technologies in crystalline materials #Quantum #Reciprocating motion #Refrigeration #Refrigerator car #Scaling #Zero (linguistics) #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/85/30008
published in Europhysics Letters (EPL) 85(3), 30008 (Institute of Physics)
arxiv created 2008/08/04 · openalex publication_date 2009/02/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The emergence of the laws of thermodynamics from the laws of quantum mechanics is an unresolved issue. The generation of the third law of thermodynamics from quantum dynamics is analysed. The scaling of the optimal cooling power of a reciprocating quantum refrigerator is sought as a function of the cold bath temperature as T c →0. The working medium consists of noninteracting particles in a harmonic potential. Two closed-form solutions of the refrigeration cycle are analyzed, and compared to a numerical optimization scheme, focusing on cooling toward zero temperature. The optimal cycle is characterized by linear relations between the heat extracted from the cold bath, the energy level spacing of the working medium and the temperature. The scaling of the optimal cooling rate is found to be proportional to T c 3/2 giving a dynamical interpretation to the third law of thermodynamics.