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Salt particles that have dissolved in water never spontaneously come back together in solution to reform solid particles. Moreover, a gas that has expanded in a vacuum remains dispersed and never spontaneously reassembles. The unidirectional nature of these phenomena is the result of a thermodynamic state function called entropy (S). Entropy is the measure of the extent to which the energy is dispersed throughout a system, or in other words, it is proportional to the degree of disorder of a...
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Single-particle stochastic heat engine.

Shubhashis Rana1, P S Pal1, Arnab Saha2

  • 1Institute of Physics, Sachivalaya Marg, Bhubaneswar-751005, India.

Physical Review. E, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
|November 7, 2014
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

This study analyzes a Brownian particle heat engine, revealing significant efficiency fluctuations. The engine requires a critical temperature difference to operate, with reliability increasing at longer cycle times.

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Area of Science:

  • Thermodynamics
  • Statistical Mechanics
  • Non-equilibrium Physics

Background:

  • Stochastic heat engines offer insights into energy conversion at the nanoscale.
  • Understanding fluctuations is crucial for characterizing real-world engines.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To analyze a single-particle stochastic heat engine with a time-dependent harmonic potential.
  • To investigate thermodynamic quantities and their fluctuations in different regimes.

Main Methods:

  • Extensive analysis of a Brownian particle in a time-dependent harmonic potential.
  • Comparison of inertial and overdamped regimes.
  • Analytical calculations in the quasistatic regime.

Main Results:

  • Thermodynamic quantities, including efficiency, exhibit strong fluctuations.
  • A finite critical temperature difference is required for engine operation.
  • Fluctuations dominate mean values even in the quasistatic regime.

Conclusions:

  • Engine performance is model-dependent, ruling out universal relations.
  • Reliability improves with larger cycle times.
  • Fluctuation relations for heat engines in a time-periodic steady state were verified.