How small can thermal machines be? The smallest possible refrigerator.

نویسندگان

  • Noah Linden
  • Sandu Popescu
  • Paul Skrzypczyk
چکیده

We investigate the fundamental dimensional limits to thermodynamic machines. In particular, we show that it is possible to construct self-contained refrigerators (i.e., not requiring external sources of work) consisting of only a small number of qubits and/or qutrits. We present three different models, consisting of two qubits, a qubit and a qutrit with nearest-neighbor interactions, and a single qutrit, respectively. We then investigate the fundamental limits to their performance; in particular, we show that it is possible to cool towards absolute zero.

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عنوان ژورنال:
  • Physical review letters

دوره 105 13  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2010