Liliana Arrachea (University of Buenos Aires)
December 2
2:00 pm
ABSTRACT:
Starting from the seminal works of Aharonov and Bohm and Berry, geometric effects have pervaded many areas of physics. In quantum transport, distinct contributions of geometric origin affect charge and energy currents. In the absence of an additional dc bias, the pumped charge in a periodically driven system was shown to be of geometric origin, and can thus be expressed in terms of a closed-path integral in parameter space, akin to the Berry phase. Geometric concepts like a thermodynamic metric and a thermodynamic length were recently introduced as promising tools to characterize the dissipated energy and to design optimal driving protocols. Similar ideas are behind the description of the adiabatic time-evolution of many-body ground states of closed systems in terms of a geometric tensor.
This large body of work linking geometry to transport naturally hints at similar connections for thermal machines. In this seminar, I will discuss how, under quite general assumptions, the operation of quantum thermal machines and the underlying heat-work conversion is fundamentally tied to such geometric effects. We recently formulated a unified description in terms of a geometric tensor for all the relevant energy fluxes, which we refer to as thermal geometric tensor [1]. Within this description, pumping and dissipation are, respectively, associated with the antisymmetric and symmetric components of this tensor. Furthermore, we show that the problem of optimizing the power generation of a heat engine and the efficiency of both the heat engine and refrigerator operational modes is reduced to an isoperimetric problem with non-trivial underlying metrics and curvature. This corresponds to the maximization of the ratio between the area enclosed by a closed curve and its corresponding length [2]. A simple example of this operation is a slowly driven qubit asymmetrically coupled to two reservoirs kept at different temperatures.
[1] Bhandari, B., Alonso, P. T., Taddei, F., von Oppen, F., Fazio, R., & Arrachea, L. (2020). Geometric properties of adiabatic quantum thermal machines. Physical Review B, 102(15), 155407.
[2] Alonso, P. T., Abiuso, P., Perarnau-Llobet, M., & Arrachea, L. (2021). Geometric optimization of non-equilibrium adiabatic thermal machines and implementation in a qubit system. arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.12648.
BIOGRAPHY:
Now: Researcher from CONICET, Argentina, Prof. University of San Martin and University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (on leave)
Previously: Master and PhD from University of La Plata Argentina,
Postdoc: Alexander von Humboldt Fellow FU-Berlin, MPIPKS-DresdenRamon y Cajal Researcher, Zaragoza, Spain (2004-2008)
Invited scientist (more than one month): SISSA-Trieste, Paris 6 and 7, PUC-Rio de Janeiro, Boston UniversityGuggenheim Fellow (Latin American competition) 2011Alexander von Humboldt (Georg Forster) research prize 2016