Title : Quantum Thermal Machines at the Nanoscale: bounds on Precision
일시 : 2026년 3월 17일 (화), 17시
장소 : 아산이학관 433호
Speaker : Rosa Lopez (University of Islas Baleares, Spain)
Abstracts:
Quantum devices that convert heat into useful work or cooling operate in a regime where fluctuations are unavoidable, raising fundamental questions about how precisely they can be controlled. Building on recent advances in stochastic and quantum thermodynamics, this colloquium will explore universal bounds that constrain the precision of such nanoscale thermal machines in terms of their entropy production and dynamical timescales. I will first introduce thermodynamic uncertainty relations as a framework to quantify trade-offs between power, efficiency, and current fluctuations, and discuss how they are modified or even violated in genuinely quantum settings such as coherent conductors and superconducting hybrid structures. Then I will show how these bounds can be sharpened for concrete architectures such as quantum dots, nanojunctions, and autonomous refrigerators, highlighting design principles for achieving high output stability without incurring prohibitive dissipation. Finally, I will outline open directions, including the role of strong coupling, many-body correlations, and other uncertainty relations in regimes far from equilibrium, addressing ultimate limits to precision in quantum heat engines and refrigerators with implications for future quantum technologies.