Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relations for Coherent Transport

We derive a universal thermodynamic uncertainty relation for fermionic coherent transport, which bounds the total rate of entropy production in terms of the mean and fluctuations of a single particle current. This bound holds for any multiterminal geometry and arbitrary chemical and thermal biases, as long as no external magnetic fields are applied. It can further be saturated in two-terminal settings with boxcar-shaped transmission functions and reduces to its classical counterpart in linear response. Upon insertion of a numerical factor, our bound also extends to systems with broken time-reversal symmetry. As an application, we derive trade-off relations between the figures of merit of coherent thermoelectric heat engines and refrigerators, which show that such devices can attain ideal efficiency only at vanishing mean power or diverging power fluctuations. To illustrate our results, we work out a model of a coherent conductor consisting of a chain of quantum dots.

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Publication Details

Journal
Physical Review Letters
Published
2025-06-27
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/6nww-8wcp
Citations
10
Primary Topic
Nuclear reactor physics and engineering
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
49.94
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article

Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relations for Coherent Transport

Keiji Saito, Karl J. Friston
10 citations
Physical Review Letters
Nuclear reactor physics and engineering
49.94
article

Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relations for Coherent Transport

Keiji Saito, Karl J. Friston
article en
10 citations

Abstract

We derive a universal thermodynamic uncertainty relation for fermionic coherent transport, which bounds the total rate of entropy production in terms of the mean and fluctuations of a single particle current. This bound holds for any multiterminal geometry and arbitrary chemical and thermal biases, as long as no external magnetic fields are applied. It can further be saturated in two-terminal settings with boxcar-shaped transmission functions and reduces to its classical counterpart in linear response. Upon insertion of a numerical factor, our bound also extends to systems with broken time-reversal symmetry. As an application, we derive trade-off relations between the figures of merit of coherent thermoelectric heat engines and refrigerators, which show that such devices can attain ideal efficiency only at vanishing mean power or diverging power fluctuations. To illustrate our results, we work out a model of a coherent conductor consisting of a chain of quantum dots.

Physical Review LettersVol. 135(4)
University of Nottingham (GB), Kyoto University (JP), Equilibrium Research (GB)
Climate action
Openalex Percentile: Top 0%
Nuclear reactor physics and engineering
49.94
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