382 research outputs found
Quantum bath refrigeration towards absolute zero: unattainability principle challenged
A minimal model of a quantum refrigerator (QR), i.e. a periodically
phase-flipped two-level system permanently coupled to a finite-capacity bath
(cold bath) and an infinite heat dump (hot bath), is introduced and used to
investigate the cooling of the cold bath towards the absolute zero (T=0).
Remarkably, the temperature scaling of the cold-bath cooling rate reveals that
it does not vanish as T->0 for certain realistic quantized baths, e.g. phonons
in strongly disordered media (fractons) or quantized spin-waves in ferromagnets
(magnons). This result challenges Nernst's third-law formulation known as the
unattainability principle
Transient energy excitation in shortcuts to adiabaticity for the time dependent harmonic oscillator
There is recently a surge of interest to cut down the time it takes to change
the state of a quantum system adiabatically. We study for the time-dependent
harmonic oscillator the transient energy excitation in speed-up processes
designed to reproduce the initial populations at some predetermined final
frequency and time, providing lower bounds and examples. Implications for the
limits imposed to the process times and for the principle of unattainability of
the absolute zero, in a single expansion or in quantum refrigerator cycles, are
drawn.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure
Universal restrictions to the conversion of heat into work derived from the analysis of the Nernst theorem as a uniform limit
We revisit the relationship between the Nernst theorem and the Kelvin-Planck
statement of the second law. We propose that the exchange of entropy uniformly
vanishes as the temperature goes to zero. The analysis of this assumption shows
that is equivalent to the fact that the compensation of a Carnot engine scales
with the absorbed heat so that the Nernst theorem should be embedded in the
statement of the second law.
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Se analiza la relaci{\'o}n entre el teorema de Nernst y el enunciado de
Kelvin-Planck del segundo principio de la termodin{\'a}mica. Se{\~n}alamos el
hecho de que el cambio de entrop{\'\i}a tiende uniformemente a cero cuando la
temperatura tiende a cero. El an{\'a}lisis de esta hip{\'o}tesis muestra que es
equivalente al hecho de que la compensaci{\'o}n de una m{\'a}quina de Carnot
escala con el calor absorbido del foco caliente, de forma que el teorema de
Nernst puede derivarse del enunciado del segundo principio.Comment: 8pp, 4 ff. Original in english. Also available translation into
spanish. Twocolumn format. RevTe
Decoupling electrocaloric effect from Joule heating in a solid state cooling device
We report a heat dynamics analysis of the electrocaloric effect (ECE) in
commercial multilayer capacitors based on BaTiO3 dielectric, a promising
candidate for applications as a solid state cooling device. Direct measurements
of the time evolution of the sample's temperature changes under different
applied voltages allow us to decouple the contributions from Joule heating and
from the ECE. Heat balance equations were used to model the thermal coupling
between different parts of the system. Fingerprints of Joule heating and the
ECE could be resolved at different time scales. We argue that Joule heating and
the thermal coupling of the device to the environment must be carefully taken
in to account in future developments of refrigeration technologies employing
the ECE.Comment: Acepted to be published in Applied Phys. Letters (2011
Electronic thermal transport in strongly correlated multilayered nanostructures
The formalism for a linear-response many-body treatment of the electronic
contributions to thermal transport is developed for multilayered
nanostructures. By properly determining the local heat-current operator, it is
possible to show that the Jonson-Mahan theorem for the bulk can be extended to
inhomogeneous problems, so the various thermal-transport coefficient integrands
are related by powers of frequency (including all effects of vertex corrections
when appropriate). We illustrate how to use this formalism by showing how it
applies to measurements of the Peltier effect, the Seebeck effect, and the
thermal conductance.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Low temperature Thermodynamics in the Context of Dissipative Diamagnetism
We revisit here the effect of quantum dissipation on the much - studied
problem of Landau diamagnetism, and analyze the results in the light of the
third law of thermodynamics. The case of an additional parabolic potential is
separately assessed. We find that dissipation arising from strong coupling of
the system to its environment qualitatively alters the low-temperature
thermodynamic attributes such as the entropy and the specific heat
Laboratory tests on dark energy
The physical nature of the currently observed dark energy in the universe is
completely unclear, and many different theoretical models co-exist.
Nevertheless, if dark energy is produced by vacuum fluctuations then there is a
chance to probe some of its properties by simple laboratory tests based on
Josephson junctions. These electronic devices can be used to perform `vacuum
fluctuation spectroscopy', by directly measuring a noise spectrum induced by
vacuum fluctuations. One would expect to see a cutoff near 1.7 THz in the
measured power spectrum, provided the new physics underlying dark energy
couples to electric charge. The effect exploited by the Josephson junction is a
subtile nonlinear mixing effect and has nothing to do with the Casimir effect
or other effects based on van der Waals forces. A Josephson experiment of the
suggested type will now be built, and we should know the result within the next
3 years.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure. Invited talk given at the 21 COE symposium
'Astrophysics as Interdisciplinary Science', Waseda University, Tokyo, 1-3
September 2005. To appear in Journal of Physics: Conference Series. Misprints
in eq. (3) and (4) correcte
Diffuse-Charge Dynamics in Electrochemical Systems
The response of a model micro-electrochemical system to a time-dependent
applied voltage is analyzed. The article begins with a fresh historical review
including electrochemistry, colloidal science, and microfluidics. The model
problem consists of a symmetric binary electrolyte between parallel-plate,
blocking electrodes which suddenly apply a voltage. Compact Stern layers on the
electrodes are also taken into account. The Nernst-Planck-Poisson equations are
first linearized and solved by Laplace transforms for small voltages, and
numerical solutions are obtained for large voltages. The ``weakly nonlinear''
limit of thin double layers is then analyzed by matched asymptotic expansions
in the small parameter , where is the
screening length and the electrode separation. At leading order, the system
initially behaves like an RC circuit with a response time of
(not ), where is the ionic diffusivity, but nonlinearity
violates this common picture and introduce multiple time scales. The charging
process slows down, and neutral-salt adsorption by the diffuse part of the
double layer couples to bulk diffusion at the time scale, . In the
``strongly nonlinear'' regime (controlled by a dimensionless parameter
resembling the Dukhin number), this effect produces bulk concentration
gradients, and, at very large voltages, transient space charge. The article
concludes with an overview of more general situations involving surface
conduction, multi-component electrolytes, and Faradaic processes.Comment: 10 figs, 26 pages (double-column), 141 reference
Cosmological Dark Energy: Prospects for a Dynamical Theory
We present an approach to the problem of vacuum energy in cosmology, based on
dynamical screening of Lambda on the horizon scale. We review first the
physical basis of vacuum energy as a phenomenon connected with macroscopic
boundary conditions, and the origin of the idea of its screening by particle
creation and vacuum polarization effects. We discuss next the relevance of the
quantum trace anomaly to this issue. The trace anomaly implies additional terms
in the low energy effective theory of gravity, which amounts to a non-trivial
modification of the classical Einstein theory, fully consistent with the
Equivalence Principle. We show that the new dynamical degrees of freedom the
anomaly contains provide a natural mechanism for relaxing Lambda to zero on
cosmological scales. We consider possible signatures of the restoration of
conformal invariance predicted by the fluctuations of these new scalar degrees
of freedom on the spectrum and statistics of the CMB, in light of the latest
bounds from WMAP. Finally we assess the prospects for a new cosmological model
in which the dark energy adjusts itself dynamically to the cosmological horizon
boundary, and therefore remains naturally of order H^2 at all times without
fine tuning.Comment: 50 pages, Invited Contribution to New Journal of Physics Focus Issue
on Dark Energ
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