Work Fluctuation-Dissipation Trade-Off in Heat Engines.

Area of Science:

• Thermodynamics
• Information Theory
• Statistical Mechanics

Background:

• Maximizing efficiency in heat engines and information heat engines requires minimizing work fluctuation and dissipation.
• This challenge extends to arbitrary nonequilibrium processes for any initial and final states.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish the most general trade-off relation between work fluctuation and dissipation for arbitrary nonequilibrium processes.
• To identify the fundamental lower bound of this trade-off relation and provide a protocol to achieve it.

Main Methods:

• Derivation of a general trade-off relation between work fluctuation and dissipation.
• Utilizing information distance measures like relative entropy and Renyi divergence to bound the trade-off.
• Developing an explicit protocol to achieve the fundamental lower bound.

Main Results:

• The trade-off relation is universally bounded from below by the information distance from thermal equilibrium.
• The minimum dissipation is quantified by relative entropy and Renyi divergence.
• An explicit protocol demonstrating the achievability of this fundamental lower bound is presented.

Conclusions:

• A universal lower bound for work fluctuation and dissipation trade-offs in nonequilibrium processes is established, dictated by information distance.
• This work provides a theoretical framework and practical protocol for optimizing thermodynamic efficiency.
• The findings have implications for the design and operation of advanced heat engines and feedback-controlled systems.