Universal Trade-Off Relation between Power and Efficiency for Heat Engines

Phys Rev Lett. 2016 Nov 4;117(19):190601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.190601. Epub 2016 Oct 31.

Abstract

For a general thermodynamic system described as a Markov process, we prove a general lower bound for dissipation in terms of the square of the heat current, thus establishing that nonvanishing current inevitably implies dissipation. This leads to a universal trade-off relation between efficiency and power, with which we rigorously prove that a heat engine with nonvanishing power never attains the Carnot efficiency. Our theory applies to systems arbitrarily far from equilibrium, and does not assume any specific symmetry of the model.