Dresden 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 53: Nonequilibrium Quantum Systems II (joint session TT/DY)

TT 53.2: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 11. März 2026, 15:15–15:30, HSZ/0105

Optimizing energy conversion with nonthermal resources in steady-state quantum devices — •Elsa Danielsson, Henning Kirchberg, and Janine Splettstoesser — Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

In quantum transport, particle currents are investigated through quantum devices coupled to multiple contacts, which are defined by their electrochemical potentials and temperatures. However, when reaching the nanoscale, particles might no longer equilibrate with their thermal surroundings. Consequently, in the investigation of energy conversion processes, nonthermal distributions become highly relevant descriptors of the particles' environment. I will present how a nonthermal resource can be exploited to generate power or cool a contact and how to maximize the efficiency or precision for these processes. Utilizing coherent electron scattering, the optimization is made by adjusting the transmission probabilities of electrons at different energies. Importantly, we also address the issue of how to define an efficiency as the energy current cannot be neatly divided into heat and work, due to the presence of a nonthermal resource. Based on this, we show that for a fixed output current the optimal transmission function is a series of band-passes in the energy spectrum, depending on the shape of the nonthermal distribution. When applying this result on example systems with nonthermal resources we find that all performance quantifiers improve compared to thermal counterparts. These findings highlight the importance of designing nanoelectronic devices according to the electron distributions their contacts.

Keywords: Quantum transport; Quantum thermodynamics; Nonthermal resource; Fluctuations; Nanoelectronics