Two-stroke Quantum Measurement Heat Engine

Abstract

We propose and analyze the theoretical model for a two-stroke quantum heat engine with one of the heat baths replaced by a non-selective quantum measurement. We show that the engine's invariant reference state depends on whether the cycle is monitored or unmonitored via diagnostic measurements to determine the engine's work output. We explore in detail the average work output and fluctuations of the proposed heat engine for the monitored and unmonitored cases. We also identify unitary work strokes for which the invariant states can support coherences in the energy basis leading to differing predictions for the average energy change during the unitary work strokes and the average work from the standard two-projective measurement approach.