Improving engine efficiency by extracting laser energy from hot exhaust gas Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We show that it is possible to improve the efficiency of a classical Otto-cycle heat engine by adding a high-Q microwave cavity and a laser system that can extract coherent laser energy from thermally excited exhaust atoms. This improvement does not violate the second law of thermodynamics, i.e., we show that a combined high-Q microwave cavity and a laser system does not improve the efficiency of a classical Carnot-cycle heat engine. 2003 The American Physical Society.

published proceedings

  • PHYSICAL REVIEW A

author list (cited authors)

  • Rostovtsev, Y. V., Matsko, A. B., Nayak, N., Zubairy, M. S., & Scully, M. O.

citation count

  • 23

complete list of authors

  • Rostovtsev, YV||Matsko, AB||Nayak, N||Zubairy, MS||Scully, MO

publication date

  • May 2003