Strong Violation of the Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation in a Minimal Autonomous Heat Engine

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Cital, Enrique P., Holubec, Viktor
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Cital, Enrique P.
Holubec, Viktor
author_facet Cital, Enrique P.
Holubec, Viktor
contents Thermodynamic uncertainty relations (TURs) impose a universal trade-off between current precision and entropy production in autonomous steady states, constraining in particular the power, efficiency, and constancy of heat engines. We demonstrate strong violations of the long-time TUR in a minimal autonomous heat engine composed of a discrete ratchet generating work against a constant bias and an underdamped harmonic oscillator acting as an internal stochastic control. In the regime of time-scale separation, the model becomes exactly solvable and yields a closed analytical expression for the TUR ratio, where the influence of the continuous degree of freedom is fully captured by the Fano factor of oscillator zero crossings. We show that increasingly deterministic internal control drives the TUR ratio arbitrarily close to zero while the engine operates near maximal current and efficiency. In an appropriate limit, the model reduces to the classical pendulum-clock system of Pietzonka, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 130606 (2022).
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_20041
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Strong Violation of the Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation in a Minimal Autonomous Heat Engine
Cital, Enrique P.
Holubec, Viktor
Statistical Mechanics
Thermodynamic uncertainty relations (TURs) impose a universal trade-off between current precision and entropy production in autonomous steady states, constraining in particular the power, efficiency, and constancy of heat engines. We demonstrate strong violations of the long-time TUR in a minimal autonomous heat engine composed of a discrete ratchet generating work against a constant bias and an underdamped harmonic oscillator acting as an internal stochastic control. In the regime of time-scale separation, the model becomes exactly solvable and yields a closed analytical expression for the TUR ratio, where the influence of the continuous degree of freedom is fully captured by the Fano factor of oscillator zero crossings. We show that increasingly deterministic internal control drives the TUR ratio arbitrarily close to zero while the engine operates near maximal current and efficiency. In an appropriate limit, the model reduces to the classical pendulum-clock system of Pietzonka, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 130606 (2022).
title Strong Violation of the Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation in a Minimal Autonomous Heat Engine
topic Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20041