668 research outputs found
An Exact Efficiency Formula for Holographic Heat Engines
Further consideration is given to the efficiency of black hole heat engines
that perform mechanical work via the pdV terms present in the First Law of
extended gravitational thermodynamics. It is noted that when the engine cycle
is a rectangle with sides parallel to the (p,V) axes, the efficiency can be
written simply in terms of the mass of the black hole evaluated at the corners.
Since an arbitrary cycle can be approximated to any desired accuracy by a
tiling of rectangles, a general geometrical algorithm for computing the
efficiency follows. A simple generalization of the algorithm renders it
applicable to more general classes of heat engine, beyond the black hole
context.Comment: 10 pages, 6 multicomponent figures, one trumpet; v2: typo corrected
in equation (3
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