Seminar: "The smallest possible thermal machines and the foundations of thermodynamics"

Professor Sandu Popescu is a 2022/2023 IAS Distinguished Scholar of the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies.

Abstract: 

In my talk, I raise the question about the fundamental limits to the size of thermal machines – refrigerators, heat pumps and work-producing engines - and I will present the smallest possible ones. I will then discuss the issue of a possible complementarity between size and efficiency and show that even the smallest machines could be maximally efficient, and I will also present a new point of view on what is work and what thermal machines actually do. Finally, I will present a completely new approach to the foundations of thermodynamics that follows from these results.