We study a quantum heat engine at strong coupling between the system and the thermal reservoirs. Exploiting a collective coordinate mapping, we incorporate system-reservoir correlations into a consistent thermodynamic analysis, thus circumventing the usual restriction to weak coupling and vanishing correlations. We apply our formalism to the example of a quantum Otto cycle, demonstrating that the performance of the engine is diminished in the strong coupling regime with respect to its weakly coupled counterpart, producing a reduced net work output and operating at a lower energy conversion efficiency. We identify costs imposed by sudden decoupling of the system and reservoirs around the cycle as being primarily responsible for the diminished performance, and define an alternative operational procedure which can partially recover the work output and efficiency. More generally, the collective coordinate mapping holds considerable promise for wider studies of thermodynamic systems beyond weak reservoir coupling.

Distinguishing hot from cold is the most primitive form of thermometry. Here we consider how well this task can be performed using a single qubit to distinguish between two different temperatures of a bosonic bath. In this simple setting, we find that letting the qubit equilibrate with the bath is not optimal, and depending on the interaction time it may be advantageous for the qubit to start in a state with some quantum coherence. We also briefly consider the case that the qubit is initially entangled with a second qubit that is not put into contact with the bath, and show that entanglement allows for even better thermometry.Comment: Minor changes to match published version, references updated. 5 pages, 2 figure

We report differential and integral cross sections for elastic scattering and rovibrational [ v = 0-1) excitation of H, by electrons at seven energies in the range 1-5 eV.The measurements were conducted on a fine energy grid in an attempt to resolve an impasse that had arisen between theory and 'swarm' derived cross sections and to enable a detailed comparison to be made with the best available theoretical calculations.

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