Role of System-Bath Interaction in Non-Markovian Quantum Brownian Otto Cycles

Abstract:We study finite-time quantum Otto cycles whose working medium is a harmonic oscillator undergoing a quantum Brownian motion described by the Caldeira-Leggett model when the oscillator is in contact with heat baths in isochoric processes. The time evolution of the Otto cycle is studied by analytically solving the exact Heisenberg-Langevin equations for the system variables and the interaction energy between the system and the bath. This enables us to investigate non-Markovian strong-coupling effects on the quantum Otto cycle. We obtain cyclic steady states and study the thermodynamic properties of the Otto cycle for various values of the parameters describing the heat baths and the coupling between the system and the bath. We compare our results with those obtained in the Markovian limit, where the time evolution is described by the Lindblad equation. We find that the change in the interaction energy during the isochoric process contributes to both work and heat and plays a crucial role in determining the thermodynamic behavior of the cycle. This is in contrast to the behavior of the state observables of the working medium, which show relatively small change compared to the Markovian counterparts. We find that non-Markovian effects only become significant when we consider thermodynamic fluxes such as work and heat with the system-bath interaction fully taken into account. We also compare our results with the power-efficiency trade-off relation recently proposed for the Markovian quantum Otto engine.

Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

arXiv:2606.01750 [cond-mat.stat-mech]

(or arXiv:2606.01750v2 [cond-mat.stat-mech] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.01750 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

https://doi.org/10.1103/zkwl-y1xk Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources

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