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Eports: Extracting Work From A Single Heat Bath Via Vanishing Quantum Coherence
Eports: Extracting Work From A Single Heat Bath Via Vanishing Quantum Coherence
Extracting Work from a Single between emission and absorption as in the case
of LWI (Fig. 1, D and E). The connection with
Quantum Coherence
work as we increase overall entropy. With
phaseonium fuel, we get a kind of “sorting
action” in which hot atoms emit photons, but
Marlan O. Scully,1,2 M. Suhail Zubairy,1,3 Girish S. Agarwal,1,4 cold atoms absorb less than they ordinarily
Herbert Walther2 would. Phaseonium fuel uses quantum coher-
ence and interference to achieve single bath
We present here a quantum Carnot engine in which the atoms in the heat bath operation in the spirit of Maxwell’s demon.
are given a small bit of quantum coherence. The induced quantum coherence Here, we do not claim to have a “perpetual
becomes vanishingly small in the high-temperature limit at which we operate mobile of the second kind.” We do claim to
and the heat bath is essentially thermal. However, the phase , associated with be able to extract work from a single heat
the atomic coherence, provides a new control parameter that can be varied to bath. It takes energy, e.g., from an external
increase the temperature of the radiation field and to extract work from a single source of microwaves, to prepare the coher-
冉 冊
the analysis of a photo-Carnot QHE driven by a Solving for n̄ in steady state we find given by
multi-mode radiation field (18). kT h
The stimulus for our work came from two n ⌽ ⬵ n (1⫺n εcos) ⬵
ប⍀
(1 ⫺ n̄εcos) (3) aa 0 0
innovations in quantum optics: the micromaser
bb bc ⫽
冢 冣
lation. In LWI, the atoms have a nearly degen- Boltzmann constant.
erate pair of levels making up the ground state The radiation field generated by phase- 0 P b ⫹⌬ bc
(Fig. 1C). When the lower level pair is coher- coherent atoms is still a thermal field. That is,
ently prepared, a small excited state population n and all higher order moments are charac- 0 cb P c ⫺⌬
can yield lasing (without inversion). Here, the terized by a single temperature T (10, 11).
“engine” is a microlaser cavity in which one Thus, we write n ⫽ kT/ប⍀, which taken
mirror is a piston driven by the radiation pres- together with Eq. 3 yields In Eqs. 5 and 6, the off-diagonal element bc
sure (20) given by T ⫽ T h(1⫺n εcos) (4) describes, or perhaps better defines, the co-
herence between b and c. This coherence is
PV ⫽ ប⍀ n (1) This is our main result. If we adjust the model-dependent, and the case of micro-
relative phase between b and c by, for exam- wave-induced coherence is discussed. The
where P is the radiation pressure, V is the ple, varying the phase of a microwave field concomitant changes in Pb and Pc, denoted
by ⌬ in Eq. 6, are negligible.
Comparing Eqs. 5 and 6, we see that ε ⫽
2ⱍbcⱍ/(Pb ⫹ Pc) because bc ⫹ cb ⫽
2ⱍbcⱍcos. In the high-temperature limit, Pb
⬃ Pc ⬃ 1/3, which gives ε ⫽ 3ⱍbcⱍ.
The preceding basics provide a foundation
for treating the single-mode “photon” QHE.
Here, we focus on a Carnot cycle operation
consisting of four steps (Fig. 2): (i) isother-
mal expansion from 1 to 2 at a higher tem-
perature determined by the thermally excited
atoms, (ii) shutting off of the atomic beam
Fig. 1. (A) Photo-Carnot engine in which radiation pressure from a thermally excited single-mode field
drives a piston. Atoms flow through the engine and keep the field at a constant temperature Trad for the
isothermal 1 3 2 portion of the Carnot cycle (Fig. 2). Upon exiting the engine, the bath atoms are cooler
than when they entered and are reheated by interactions with the hohlraum at Th and “stored” in
preparation for the next cycle. The combination of reheating and storing is depicted in (A) as the heat
reservoir. A cold reservoir at Tc provides the entropy sink. (B) Two-level atoms in a regular thermal
distribution, determined by temperature Th, heat the driving radiation to Trad ⫽ Th such that the regular
operating efficiency is given by . (C) When the field is heated, however, by a phaseonium in which the
ground state doublet has a small amount of coherence and the populations of levels a, b, and c, are
thermally distributed, the field temperature is Trad ⬎ Th, and the operating efficiency is given by ,
where can be read off from Eq. 7. (D) A free electron propagates coherently from holes b and c with
amplitudes B and C to point a on screen. The probability of the electron landing at point a shows the
characteristic pattern of interference between (partially) coherent waves. (E) A bound atomic electron Fig. 2. Temperature-entropy diagram for Car-
is excited by the radiation field from a coherent superposition of levels b and c with amplitudes B and not cycle engine. In the present QHE, Qin is
C to level a. The probability of exciting the electron to level a displays the same kind of interference provided by the hot atoms. When Th ⫽ Tc, the
behavior as in the case of free electrons; i.e., as we change the relative phase between levels b and c, photo-Carnot engine can still produce useful
by, for example, changing the phase of the microwave field which prepares the coherence, the work if the coherent three-level heat bath at-
probability of exciting the atom varies sinusoidally, as indicated in Eq. 4. oms (Fig. 1C) are “phased” such that ⫽ .
㛬㛬㛬㛬
3. Reviews of LWI are to be found in (23–25). The 30. S. Lloyd, Phys. Rev. A 39, 5378 (1989).
by phase-coherent atoms, Th 3 T and the 31. , Phys. Rev. A 56, 3374 (1997).
present scheme is closest to the lasing without in-
Carnot efficiency is given by version model of (26). 32. T. Freedmann et al., Phys. Rev. E 61, 4774 (2000).
4. For example (27, 28). 33. R. Kosloff, E. Geva, J. Gordon, J. Appl. Phys. 87, 8093
Tc (2000).
⫽ ⫺ 3n̄ⱍ bc ⱍcos (7) 5. H. Linke et al., Science 286, 2314 (1999).
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