Quantifying nonequilibrium thermodynamic operations in a multiterminal mesoscopic system

2020/08/31 by Fatemeh Hajiloo, Rafael Sánchez, Robert S. Whitney +1 · 2 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Condensed matter physics #Mesoscopic physics #Non-equilibrium thermodynamics #Physics #Statistical physics #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies #Thermal properties of materials #Thermodynamic system #Thermodynamics #cond-mat.mes-hall

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.102.155405

published as Phys. Rev. B 102, 155405 (2020) · 22 pages, 12 figures

openalex publication_date 2020/10/06 · arxiv created 2020/10/07 · arxiv updated 2020/10/08 · openalex created_date 2020/10/15 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

This theoretical work studies a nanoscale machine that converts a nonequilibrium distribution (e.g., a mixture of hot and cold electrons) into useful work, with an efficiency that ``appears'' to exceed the Carnot efficiency. This is called an N-demon (''N'' for nonequilibrium) in analogy with a Maxwell demon. The authors show here that the laws of thermodynamics are not violated because the machine consumes the free energy of the nonequilibrium distribution. Why not use such machines to exploit the nonequilibrium distributions that are the ``waste'' output of other nanoscale device operations?

Citations

• Nanoscale Heat Engine Beyond the Carnot Limit
• On-chip Maxwell's demon as an information-powered refrigerator
• Colloquium: Phononics: Manipulating heat flow with electronic analogs and beyond
• Three-terminal thermoelectric transport under broken time-reversal symmetry
• Extracting Work from a Single Heat Bath via Vanishing Quantum Coherence
• Thermoelectric transport of mesoscopic conductors coupled to voltage and thermal probes
• Chiral Thermoelectrics with Quantum Hall Edge States
• Quantum-enhanced absorption refrigerators
• Tuning Energy Relaxation along Quantum Hall Channels
• Shot Noise in Mesoscopic Conductors
• Efficiency of heat engines coupled to nonequilibrium reservoirs
• From Thermal Rectifiers to Thermoelectric Devices
• Relaxation and revival of quasiparticles injected in an interacting quantum Hall liquid

Cited by

• Autonomous out-of-equilibrium Maxwell's demon for controlling the energy fluxes produced by thermal fluctuations
• Scattering Theory of Non-Equilibrium Noise and Delta T current fluctuations through a quantum dot