Quantum thermal machine acting on a many-body quantum system: Role of correlations in thermodynamic tasks

Abstract

We study the functioning of a three-level thermal machine when acting on a many-qubit system, the entire system being placed in an electromagnetic field in a stationary out-of-thermal-equilibrium configuration. This realistic setup stands between the two so-far-explored cases of single-qubit and macroscopic object targets, providing information on the scaling with system size of purely quantum properties in thermodynamic contexts. We show that, thanks to the presence of robust correlations among the qubits induced by the field, thermodynamic tasks can be delivered by the machine both locally to each qubit and collectively to the many-qubit system: This allows a task to be delivered also on systems much bigger than the machine size.