Dissipation-induced collective advantage of a quantum thermal machine

Abstract

Do quantum correlations lead to better performance with respect to several different systems working independently? For quantum thermal machines, the question is whether a working medium (WM) made of N constituents exhibits better performance than N independent engines working in parallel. Here, by inspecting a microscopic model with the WM composed by two non-interacting quantum harmonic oscillators, we show that the presence of a common environment can mediate non-trivial correlations in the WM leading to better quantum heat engine performance—maximum power and efficiency—with respect to an independent configuration. Furthermore, this advantage is striking for strong dissipation, a regime in which two independent engines cannot deliver any useful power. Our results show that dissipation can be exploited as a useful resource for quantum thermal engines and are then corroborated by optimization techniques here extended to non-Markovian quantum heat engines.