In this work, we report the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in a quantum dot corresponding to an electron interacting with an antidot, under the effect of an Aharonov-Bohm flux subjected to a parabolic confinement potential. We use the Bogachek and Landman model, which additionally allows the study of quantum dots with Fock-Darwin energy levels for vanishing antidot radius and flux. We find that the Aharonov-Bohm flux (AB-flux) strongly controls the oscillatory behaviour of the MCE, thus acting as a control parameter for the cooling or heating of the magnetocaloric effect. We propose a way to detect AB-flux by measuring temperature differences.

This present work explores the performance of a thermal-magnetic engine of Otto type, considering as a working substance an effective interacting spin model corresponding to the q− state clock model. We obtain all the thermodynamic quantities for the q = 2, 4, 6, 8 cases in a small lattice size (3×3 with free boundary conditions) by using the exact partition function calculated from the energies of all the accessible microstates of the system. The extension to bigger lattices was performed using the mean-field approximation. Our results indicate that the total work extraction of the cycle is highest for the q=4 case, while the performance for the Ising model (q=2) is the lowest of all cases studied. These results are strongly linked with the phase diagram of the working substance and the location of the cycle in the different magnetic phases present, where we find that the transition from a ferromagnetic to a paramagnetic phase extracts more work than one of the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless to paramagnetic type. Additionally, as the size of the lattice increases, the extraction work is lower than smaller lattices for all values of q presented in this study.

In this work, we report the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in two systems of non-interactive particles, the first corresponds to the Landau problem case and the second, the case of an electron in a quantum dot subjected to a parabolic confinement potential. In the first scenario, we realize that the effect is totally different from what happens when the degeneration of a single electron confined in a magnetic field is not taken into account. In particular, when the degeneracy of the system is negligible, the magnetocaloric effect cools the system, while in the other case, when the degeneracy is strong, the system heats up. For the second case, we study the competition between the characteristic frequency of the potential trap and the cyclotron frequency to find the optimal region that maximizes the ΔT of the magnetocaloric effect, and due to the strong degeneration of this problem, the results are in coherence with those obtained for the Landau problem. Finally, we consider the case of a transition from a normal MCE to an inverse one and back to normal as a function of temperature. This is due to the competition between the diamagnetic and paramagnetic response when the electron spin in the formulation is included.

In this paper, we revisit the q-states clock model for small systems. We present results for the thermodynamics of the q-states clock model from $q=2$ to $q=20$ for small square lattices $L \times L$, with L ranging from $L=3$ to $L=64$ with free-boundary conditions. Energy, specific heat, entropy and magnetization are measured. We found that the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT)-like transition appears for $q>5$ regardless of lattice size, while the transition at $q=5$ is lost for $L<10$; for $q\leq 4$ the BKT transition is never present. We report the phase diagram in terms of $q$ showing the transition from the ferromagnetic (FM) to the paramagnetic (PM) phases at a critical temperature T$_1$ for small systems which turns into a transition from the FM to the BKT phase for larger systems, while a second phase transition between the BKT and the PM phases occurs at T$_2$. We also show that the magnetic phases are well characterized by the two dimensional (2D) distribution of the magnetization values. We make use of this opportunity to do an information theory analysis of the time series obtained from the Monte Carlo simulations. In particular, we calculate the phenomenological mutability and diversity functions. Diversity characterizes the phase transitions, but the phases are less detectable as $q$ increases. Free boundary conditions are used to better mimic the reality of small systems (far from any thermodynamic limit). The role of size is discussed.

The isoenergetic cycle is a purely mechanical cycle comprised of adiabatic and isoenergetic processes. In the latter the system interacts with an energy bath keeping constant the expectation value of the Hamiltonian. This cycle has been mostly studied in systems consisting of particles confined in a power-law trap. In this work we study the performance of the isoenergetic cycle for a system described by the quantum Rabi model for the case of controlling the coupling strength parameter, the resonator frequency and the two-level system frequency. For the cases of controlling either the coupling strength parameter or the resonator frequency, we find that it is possible to closely approach to maximal unit efficiency when the parameter is sufficiently increased in the first adiabatic stage. In addition, for the first two cases the maximal work extracted is obtained at parameter values corresponding to high efficiency which constitutes an improvement over current proposals of this cycle.

We study the effect of the degeneracy factor in the energy levels of the well-known Landau problem for a magnetic engine. The scheme of the cycle is composed of two adiabatic processes and two isomagnetic processes driven by a quasi-static modulation of external magnetic field intensity. We derive the analytical expression of the relation between the magnetic field and temperature along the adiabatic process and, in particular, reproduce the expression for the efficiency as a function of the compression ratio.

We study the performance of a classical and quantum magnetic Otto cycle with a quantum dot as a working substance using the Fock-Darwin model with the inclusion of the Zeeman interaction. Modulating an external/perpendicular magnetic field, we found in the classical approach an oscillating behavior in the total work that is not perceptible under the quantum formulation. Also, we compare the work and efficiency of this system for different regions of the Entropy, $S(T,B)$, diagram where we found that the quantum version of this engine always shows a reduced performance in comparison to his classical counterpart.