Unified approach to power-efficiency trade-off relations of generic thermal machines
Phys. Rev. E 112, 054130 – Published 18 November, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/bvlw-rvvv
Abstract
We present a general framework for determining the power-efficiency trade-off relations across arbitrary thermal machines, addressing the lack of unified optimization results stemming from their diverse functionalities (e.g., heat engines, refrigerators, and heat pumps). For time-dependent cycle irreversibility following a power law, where is an interaction-dependent parameter, we show that engineering the interactions between thermal machines and reservoirs enables control over the trade-off relations, with the efficiency at maximum power approaching Carnot efficiency as increases. Setting naturally recovers typical low-dissipation regime results. Additionally, we derive the first power-efficiency trade-off for finite-time quantum adiabatic Otto machines with -scaling. This work establishes a unified constraint for thermodynamic cycles across nonequilibrium regimes, facilitating consistent optimization of diverse thermal devices in practice.