Abstract
Invasiveness of quantum measurements is a genuinely quantum mechanical feature that is not necessarily detrimental: Here we show how quantum measurements can be used to fuel a cooling engine. We illustrate quantum measurement cooling (QMC) by means of a prototypical two-stroke two-qubit engine which interacts with a measurement apparatus and two heat reservoirs at different temperatures. We show that feedback control is not necessary for operation while entanglement must be present in the measurement projectors. We quantify the probability that QMC occurs when the measurement basis is chosen randomly, and find that it can be very large as compared to the probability of extracting energy (heat engine operation), while remaining always smaller than the most useless operation, namely, dumping heat in both baths. These results show that QMC can be very robust to experimental noise. A possible low-temperature solid-state implementation that integrates circuit QED technology with circuit quantum thermodynamics technology is presented.
- Received 24 July 2018
- Revised 5 November 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.070603
© 2019 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Synopsis
Refrigeration by Quantum Measurements
Published 21 February 2019
A proposed noise-tolerant approach to quantum refrigeration eliminates the need for feedback control by exploiting the invasiveness of quantum measurements.
See more in Physics