Geometric heat pumping on a quantum processor

Abstract

Geometric heat pumping is the transfer of energy between reservoirs at equal temperature where the heat exchanged in an adiabatic cycle depends only on the driving contour in parameter space. We implement this mechanism on a superconducting quantum processor using a collision model, where a driven qubit interacts repeatedly with two ancilla qubits that are prepared in thermal states and emulate the reservoirs. Energy measurements before and after each interaction provide a calorimetric record of the heat exchanged with each reservoir. By reversing the driving contour, we extract a heat contribution associated with pumping. Its dependence on the period and on the contour follows exact simulations of the collision model, without adjustable parameters, and approaches in the slow-driving regime the geometric limit of the corresponding Lindblad dynamics.