Self-Oscillating Josephson Quantum Heat Engine

G. Marchegiani; P. Virtanen; F. Giazotto; M. Campisi

doi:10.1103/PhysRevApplied.6.054014

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Self-Oscillating Josephson Quantum Heat Engine

G. Marchegiani, P. Virtanen, F. Giazotto, M. Campisi

DOI 10.1103/PhysRevApplied.6.054014 · Physical Review Applied

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Abstract

The design of a mesoscopic self-oscillating heat engine that works thanks to purely quantum effects is presented. The proposed scheme is amenable to experimental implementation with current state-of-the-art nanotechnology and materials. One of the main features of the structure is its versatility: The engine can deliver work to a generic load without galvanic contact. This versatility makes it a promising building block for low-temperature on-chip energy-management applications. The heat engine consists of a circuit featuring a thermoelectric element based on a ferromagnetic insulator-superconductor tunnel junction and a Josephson weak link that realizes a purely quantum dc-ac converter. This makeup enables the contactless transfer of work to the load (a generic RL circuit). The performance of the heat engine is investigated as a function of the thermal gradient applied to the thermoelectric junction. Power up to 1 pW can be delivered to a load RL=10 Ω.