Abstract

Minimal models for quantum thermal machines are central to understand energy exchanges at the quantum scale and the intimate connection between quantum thermodynamics and quantum information theory. In particular, one would like to determine whether collective effects, many-body interactions and quantum correlations can be beneficial to the efficiency of a thermal machine made of few quantum constituents. This research direction becomes even more fascinating in view of recent experimental progresses towards manipulating out-of-equilibrium multi-partite quantum systems. In this talk, I will present some of our latest results concerning the advantages that open (non-Hermitian) quantum systems can offer towards heat management at the nanoscale, including energy storage, control of energy flow and optimization of dissipative flows.

References: Khandelwal et al., PRX Quantum 2, 040346 (2021) Seah et al., PRL 127 , 100601 (2021) Khandelwal et al., arXiv:2208.10809 (2022) Blasi et al., arXiv:2208.14336 (2022)