Assessing the impact of imperfect control in quantum thermodynamics

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

EPSRC staff reading the project details will be trying to determine which of our research areas the project fits into (it could be more than one). To help them do this, project details provided should be as specific as possible and clearly describe: the research questions the project is trying to address/the objectives of the project; the approach that will be taken to answer these questions (what the student will actually be doing); the novel engineering and/or physical sciences content of the research (the science that places it within EPSRC's remit).If you think you know which EPSRC research areas are relevant to the project, it would be helpful to include this. The project description should be written so as to be understandable by an educated lay-person and any acronyms should be defined. This project aims to assess the impact of random noise within thermodynamic control protocols in open quantum systems. We will explore how robust control protocols, such as shortcuts to adiabaticity, can be made to imperfections in their application, arising for example through uncontrollable fluctuations in the amplitude and phase of the control signals. We will use both master equation techniques and stochastic unravelings to model quantum thermodynamic cycles for both heat engines and refrigeration under noisy control. Full counting statistics techniques will be extended to noisy control situations to calculate thermodynamic metrics such as cycle powers, efficiencies, and their variances. We will apply our findings to suggest novel quantum control protocols to optimise these thermodynamic metrics in the presence of imperfect control restrictions.