2025/06/02 by S., Gauthameshwar, Jaseem, Noufal, Poletti, Dario · 1 citation
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum many-body systems #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.01852
openalex publication_date 2025/06/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Autonomous quantum thermal machines are particularly suited to understand how correlations between thermal baths, a load, and a thermal machine affect the overall thermodynamic functioning of the setup. Here, we show that by tuning the operating temperatures and the magnitude of the coupling between machine and load, the thermal machine can operate in four modes: engine, accelerator, heater, or refrigerator. In particular, we show that as we increase the coupling strength, the engine mode is suppressed, and the refrigerator mode is no longer attainable, leaving the heater as the most pronounced functioning modality, followed by the accelerator. This regime switching can be amplified by quantum effects, such as the bosonic enhancement factor for a harmonic oscillator load, which modifies the effective machine-load coupling, making the thermodynamic functioning sensitive to the initial preparation of the load.