Work extraction from quantum coherence in non-equilibrium environment

We investigate the dynamics of ergotropy in open systems under Markovian and non-Markovian evolutions. In this scenario, we begin by formulating the ergotropy of an arbitrary qubit state in terms of energy and coherence. Thus, we determine the conditions for ergotropy freezing and ergotropy sudden death as a consequence of the system-bath interaction. In order to use ergotropy as a resource for energy extraction in the form of work in an open-system scenario, we adopt the ent...

A key concept in quantum thermodynamics is extractable work, which specifies the maximum amount of work that can be extracted from a quantum system. Different quantities are used to measure extractable work, the most prevalent of which are ergotropy and the difference between the non-equilibrium and equilibrium quantum free energy. Using the former, we investigate the evolution of extractable work when an open quantum system goes through a general quantum process described by...

We show that it is possible to have non-zero ergotropy in the steady-states of an open quantum system consisting of qubits that are collectively coupled to a thermal bath at a finite temperature. The dynamics of our model leads the qubits into a steady-state that has coherences in the energy eigenbasis when the number of qubits in the system is more than one. We observe that even though the system do not have inverted populations, it is possible to extract work from the coher...

Constraints on work extraction are fundamental to our operational understanding of the thermodynamics of both classical and quantum systems. In the quantum setting, finite-time control operations typically generate coherence in the instantaneous energy eigenbasis of the dynamical system. Thermodynamic cycles can, in principle, be designed to extract work from this non-equilibrium resource. Here, we isolate and study the quantum coherent component to the work yield in such pro...

Understanding the role of classical and quantum correlations in work extraction is a problem of fundamental importance in thermodynamics. We approach this problem by considering that, in closed quantum systems, the maximum cyclic work extractable is equal to the ergotropy. Thus, we aim to identify and investigate the contributions to the ergotropy coming from different kinds of initial correlations (total, classical, discord and entanglement correlations). By doing so, we hav...

We study the role of the initial quantum coherence in coherent processes generated by an external control of some parameters by looking on the thermodynamic work done. We start by taking in exam an active state and we isolate the contribution to the ergotropy coming from the quantum coherence among the energy eigenstates. It is shown to be related to the quantum relative entropy of coherence through an inequality which involves the completely passive state connected to the in...

We investigate how the presence of quantum correlations can influence work extraction in closed quantum systems, establishing a new link between the field of quantum non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the one of quantum information theory. We consider a bipartite quantum system and we show that it is possible to optimise the process of work extraction, thanks to the correlations between the two parts of the system, by using an appropriate feedback protocol based on the concep...

We propose a new form of the Second Law inequality that defines a tight bound for extractable work from the non-equilibrium quantum state. In classical thermodynamics, the optimal work is given by the difference of free energy, what according to the result of Skrzypczyk \emph{et al.} can be generalized for individual quantum systems. The saturation of this bound, however, requires an infinite bath and an ideal energy storage that is able to extract work from coherences. The n...

It is an established fact that quantum coherences have thermodynamic value. The natural question arises, whether other genuine quantum properties such as entanglement can also be exploited to extract thermodynamic work. In the present analysis, we show that the ergotropy can be expressed as a function of the quantum mutual information, which demonstrates the contributions to the extractable work from classical and quantum correlations. More specifically, we analyze bipartite ...

A short introduction on quantum thermodynamics is given and three new topics are discussed: 1) Maximal work extraction from a finite quantum system. The thermodynamic prediction fails and a new, general result is derived, the ``ergotropy''. 2) In work extraction from two-temperature setups, the presence of correlations can push the effective efficiency beyond the Carnot bound. 3) In the presence of level crossing, non-slow changes may be more optimal than slow ones.