preprints.org > physical sciences > quantum science and technology > doi: 10.20944/preprints202310.0879.v1

Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Version 1 : Received: 11 October 2023 / Approved: 13 October 2023 / Online: 13 October 2023 (10:09:21 CEST)

We study the work fluctuations in ergotropic heat engines, namely two-strokes quantum Otto engines where the work stroke is designed to extract the ergotropy (the maximum amount of work by a cyclic unitary evolution) from a couple of quantum systems at canonical equilibrium at two different temperatures, whereas the heat stroke thermalizes back the systems to their respective reservoirs. We provide an exaustive study for the case of two qutrits whose energy levels are equally spaced at two different frequencies by deriving the complete work statistics. By varying the values of temperatures and frequencies, only three kinds of optimal unitary strokes are found: the swap operator U1, an idle swap U2 (where one of the qutrits is regarded as an effective qubit), and a non trivial permutation of energy eigenstates U3, which indeed corresponds to the composition of the two previous unitaries, namely U3 = U2U1. While U1 and U2 are Hermitian (and hence involutions), U3 is not. This point has an impact on the thermodynamic uncertainty relations (TURs) which bound the signal-to-noise ratio of the extracted work in terms of the entropy production. In fact, we show that all TURs derived from a strong detailed fluctuation theorem are violated by the transformation U3.

quantum thermodynamics; quantum heat engines; thermodynamic uncertainty relations; two-stroke Otto cycles; ergotropy

Physical Sciences, Quantum Science and Technology

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