Steering Heat Engines: A Truly Quantum Maxwell Demon



: Beyer K, Luoma K, Strunz WT

Publisher: AMER PHYSICAL SOC

: 2019

: Physical Review Letters

: PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

: PHYS REV LETT

: ARTN 250606

: 123

: 25

: 6

: 0031-9007

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.250606


We address the question of verifying the quantumness of thermal machines. A Szilard engine is truly quantum if its work output cannot be described by a local hidden state model, i.e., an objective local statistical ensemble. Quantumness in this scenario is revealed by a steering-type inequality which bounds the classically extractable work. A quantum Maxwell demon can violate that inequality by exploiting quantum correlations between the work medium and the thermal environment. While for a classical Szilard engine an objective description of the medium always exists, any such description can be ruled out by a steering task in a truly quantum case.



Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 13:50