Autonomous Quantum Devices: When Are They Realizable without Additional Thermodynamic Costs?

Understand

The resource theory of quantum thermodynamics has been a very successful theory and has generated much follow-up work in the community.

• It requires energy-preserving unitary operations to be implemented over a system, bath, and catalyst as part of its paradigm.
• So far, such unitary operations have been considered a "free" resource in the theory.
• However, this is only an idealization of a necessarily inexact process.