S N A P C H A T TEENY, WEENY... World’s smallest heat engine runs on one atom! Classical thermodynamics has been taken to a whole new scale by a team of Quantum German physicists. Mechanical miniaturisation has been pushed to the limit to create the world’s smallest heat engine, made of just one atom. This microscale, single-atom heat engine, like steam turbines, converts a difference in temperature to mechanical work. The Industrial Revolution would never have happened if not for the power of heat engines, and today you’ll recognise them more commonly as a car and jet engine. How did the team demonstrate that thermal machines can be reduced to single atom limits? A single electrically-charged calcium atom is confined in a linear Paul trap with tapered geometry and driven thermally by coupling it alternately to hot and cold reservoirs. The output power of the engine is used to drive a harmonic oscillation. From direct measurements of the ion dynamics, the team was able to determine the thermodynamic cycles for various temperature differences of the reservoirs. They then used these cycles to evaluate the power P and efficiency Ñ of the engine, obtaining values up to P = 3.4 × 10 –22 joules per second and Ñ = 0.28%. EN 14 May 2016
1-64 NZEN May16
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