Stochastic heat engines can be built using colloidal particles trapped using optical tweezers.
Here we review recent experimental realizations of microscopic heat engines. We first revisit …

At the dawn of thermodynamics, Carnot's constraint on efficiency of heat engines stimulated
the formulation of one of the most universal physical principles, the second law of …

The Carnot cycle imposes a fundamental upper limit to the efficiency of a macroscopic motor
operating between two thermal baths. However, this bound needs to be reinterpreted at …

The Carnot statement of the second law of thermodynamics poses an upper limit on the
efficiency of all heat engines. Recently, it has been studied whether generic quantum …

The efficiency of quantum heat engines is a stochastic quantity owing to the presence of
thermal and quantum fluctuations. We here extend the standard two-projective …

We calculate analytically the stochastic thermodynamic properties of an isothermal
Brownian engine driven by a duo of time-periodic forces, including its Onsager coefficients …

Nanoscale machines are strongly influenced by thermal fluctuations, contrary to their
macroscopic counterparts. As a consequence, even the efficiency of such microscopic …

A universality in optimization of trade-off between power and efficiency for low-dissipation
Carnot cycles is presented. It is shown that any trade-off measure expressible in terms of …

The widely debated feasibility of thermodynamic machines achieving Carnot efficiency at
finite power has been convincingly dismissed. Yet, the common wisdom that efficiency can …

We present a method, based on characterizing efficiency fluctuations, to assess the
performance of nanoscale thermoelectric junctions. This method accounts for effects …