Transient effects in quantum refrigerators with finite environments

Abstract

We explore a small quantum refrigerator consisting of three qubits, each of which is kept in contact with an environment. We consider two settings: one is when there is necessarily transient cooling and the other is when both steady-state and transient coolings prevail. Our primary focus, however, is on the transient cooling phenomena. We show that in the transient regime, the temperature of the cold qubit can decrease further compared to the case where all qubits are connected to Markovian environments, by replacing the environment attached to the cold qubit with a finite-size spin environment, modeled by a few quantum spins interacting with the cold qubit. We also consider refrigeration with more than one finite-size spin environments of the three-qubit refrigerating device. As expected, a steady temperature is reached only if there are at least two Markovian baths, regardless of whether the cold qubit is attached to an environment. We investigate the effects of the finite-size environments on the cooling of the cold qubit when one, two, or all Markovian baths are replaced by finite-size environments. Additionally, we examine this effect in two- and single-qubit self-sustained devices connected to one or more finite-size environments. In deriving the dynamical equations for the qubits connected to finite-size environments, we made no assumptions about the Markovian nature of the environment. As a result, these finite-size environments inherently exhibit information backflow from the environment to the system, a hallmark of non-Markovianity. Hence, we propose a witness to detect non-Markovianity in such systems. Finally, the cooling processes are studied in presence of Markovian noise, and we analyse the response on the refrigeration of the noise strength. In particular, we find the noise strength until which refrigeration remains possible.