Activation of thermal states by coherently controlled thermalization processes

Understand

Thermalization processes degrade the states of any working medium, turning any initial state into a passive state from which no work can be extracted.

• Recently, it has been shown that this degradation can be avoided if two identical thermalization processes take place in coherently controlled order, in a scenario known as the quantum SWITCH.
• In some situations, control over the order even enables work extraction when the medium was initially in a passive state.
• This activation phenomenon, however, is subject to a limitation: to extract non-zero work, the initial temperature of the medium should be less than half of the temperature of the reservoirs.