| Issue |
EPL
Volume 88, Number 5, December 2009
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 50003 | |
| Number of page(s) | 6 | |
| Section | General | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/88/50003 | |
| Published online | 16 December 2009 | |
Energetics of quantum correlations
Department of Physics, University of Augsburg - D-86135 Augsburg, Germany, EU
Corresponding author: raoul.dillen@free.fr
Received:
24
June
2009
Accepted:
16
November
2009
We consider a photo-Carnot engine that consists of a single-mode radiation field in an optical cavity. One the heat reservoirs is made of a beam of thermally entangled pairs of two-level atoms that interact resonantly with the cavity. We express the thermodynamic efficiency of the engine in terms of the quantum discord of the atomic pair and find that it can exceed its classical value. Our results show that useful work can be extracted from quantum correlations, indicating that the latter are a valuable resource in quantum thermodynamics.
PACS: 03.67.-a – Quantum information / 05.70.-a – Thermodynamics / 03.65.Yz – Decoherence; open systems; quantum statistical methods
© EPLA, 2009
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