Energetics and performance of a microscopic heat engine based on exact calculations of work and heat distributions

Abstract

We investigate a microscopic motor based on an externally controlled two-level system. We give the exact solution of the underlying dynamical equation and discuss in detail the emerging thermodynamics.

We also calculate the probability densities for the work done by the engine and for the heat accepted by the engine during one operational cycle of the engine.

Keywords

• exact results
• rigorous results in statistical mechanics
• stochastic particle dynamics (theory)