Holographic Heat Engines

Understand

It is shown that in theories of gravity where the cosmological constant is considered a thermodynamic variable, it is natural to use black holes as heat engines.

• Two examples are presented in detail using AdS charged black holes as the working substance.
• We notice that for static black holes, the maximally efficient traditional Carnot engine is also a Stirling engine.
• The case of negative cosmological constant supplies a natural realization of these engines in terms of the field theory description of the fluids to which they are holographically dual.