论文标题
有限浴的克劳西乌斯不平等揭示了普遍的效率提高
Clausius Inequality for Finite Baths Reveals Universal Efficiency Improvements
论文作者
论文摘要
我们研究纳米级设备中的熵生产，这些设备与有限的热浴耦合。这种情况是越来越多的实验性相关性，但是大多数理论方法依赖于仅适用于无限浴的第二定律的表述。我们通过指出，克劳西乌斯（Clausius）从1865年开始的论文中包含有限热浴的第二定律的足够公式，这解决了这个问题，这也可以严格源自微观量子描述。这种克劳西乌斯的不平等表明，非平衡过程比以前想象的要不可逆。我们使用它正确地扩展了Landauer的原理来有限的浴室，我们证明了与有限浴室接触的任何热发动机的效率都比以前想象的要高。重要的是，我们的结果易于研究，只需要平均浴能的知识。
We study entropy production in nanoscale devices, which are coupled to finite heat baths. This situation is of growing experimental relevance, but most theoretical approaches rely on a formulation of the second law valid only for infinite baths. We fix this problem by pointing out that already Clausius' paper from 1865 contains an adequate formulation of the second law for finite heat baths, which can be also rigorously derived from a microscopic quantum description. This Clausius' inequality shows that nonequilibrium processes are less irreversible than previously thought. We use it to correctly extend Landauer's principle to finite baths and we demonstrate that any heat engine in contact with finite baths has a higher efficiency than previously thought. Importantly, our results are easy to study, requiring only the knowledge of the average bath energy.
