Autonomous quantum thermal machines are particularly suited to understand how correlations between thermal baths, a load, and a thermal machine affect the overall thermodynamic functioning of the setup. Here, we show that by tuning the operating temperatures and the magnitude of the coupling between machine and load, the thermal machine can operate in four modes: engine, accelerator, heater, or refrigerator. In particular, we show that as we increase the coupling strength, the engine mode is suppressed and the refrigerator mode is no longer attainable, leaving the heater as the most pronounced functioning modality, followed by the accelerator. This regime switching can be amplified by quantum effects, such as the bosonic enhancement factor for a harmonic oscillator load, which effectively modifies the machine-load coupling, making the thermodynamic functioning sensitive to the initial preparation of the load.

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• Atoms, ions, & molecules in cavities
• Dissipative dynamics
• Nonequilibrium & irreversible thermodynamics
• Open quantum systems
• Quantum harmonic oscillator
• Quantum thermodynamics
• Markovian processes
• Master equation