Quantum heat valve and entanglement in superconducting LC resonators

  1. Yu-qiang Liu,
  2. Yi-jia Yang,
  3. Ting-ting Ma,
  4. and Chang-shui Yu
Quantum superconducting circuit with flexible coupler has been a powerful platform for designing quantum thermal machines. In this letter, we employ the tunable coupling of two superconducting
resonators to realize a heat valve by modulating magnetic flux using a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID). It is shown that a heat valve can be realized in a wide parameter range. We find a consistent relation between the heat current and quantum entanglement, which indicates the dominant role of entanglement on the heat valve. It provides an insightful understanding of quantum features in quantum heat machines.

Quantum heat diode versus light emission in circuit quantum electrodynamical system

  1. Yu-qiang Liu,
  2. Yi-jia Yang,
  3. and Chang-shui Yu
Precisely controlling heat transfer in a quantum mechanical system is particularly significant for designing quantum thermodynamical devices. With the technology of experiment advances,
circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit QED) has become a promising system due to controllable light matter interactions as well as flexible coupling strengths. In this paper, we design a thermal diode in terms of the two-photon Rabi model of the circuit QED system. We find that the thermal diode can not only be realized in the resonant coupling but also achieve better performance, especially for the detuned qubit-photon ultrastrong coupling. We also study the photonic detection rates and their nonreciprocity, which indicates similar behaviors with the nonreciprocal heat transport. This provides the potential to understand thermal diode behavior from the quantum optical perspective and could shed new insight into the relevant research on thermodynamical devices.