Stochastic thermodynamics is an emerging area of physics aimed at better understanding and interpreting thermodynamic concepts away from equilibrium. Over the past few years, findings in these fields have revolutionized the ...
Although many of today's accepted theories of classical thermodynamics predate even the industrial revolution they helped to propel, many open questions remain around how these ideas translate to the level of single quantum ...
Over 150 years after the famous Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell first introduced the idea, the concept of Maxwell's demon continues to perplex physicists and information scientists. The demon he dreamed up in a thought ...
The theoretical notion of a 'quantum heat engine' has been around for several decades. It was first introduced around sixty years ago by Scovil and Schulz-DuBois, two physicists at Bell Labs who drew an analogy between three-level ...
(Phys.org)—A few years ago, physicists showed that it's possible to erase information without using any energy, in contrast to the assumption at the time that erasing information must require energy. Instead, the scientists ...
(Phys.org)—Illustrating the unusual way things work on the nanoscale, scientists have designed a new nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) that produces mechanical motion due to the interactions between electrons—yet unlike ...
(Phys.org)—As its name suggests, a heat engine converts heat into mechanical energy that can be used to do work—for example, to power a car. Heat engines can operate either in a steady state (where heat is constantly ...
(Phys.org) —In 2012, a team of physicists from Germany proposed a scheme for realizing a nanoscale heat engine composed of a single ion. Like a macroscale heat engine, the theoretical nanoscale version can convert heat ...
(Phys.org) —In theory, Maxwell's demon can decrease the entropy of a system by opening and closing a door at appropriate times to separate hot and cold gas molecules. But as physicist Leó Szilárd pointed out in 1929, ...
(Phys.org)—The presence of quantum coherence in photosynthesis in plants, bacteria and marine algae at ambient temperatures is well-established. Two such effects that appeared to be unrelated – enhanced solar cell efficiency ...
