Entropy production in a photovoltaic cell

We evaluate entropy production in a photovoltaic cell that is modeled by four electronic levels resonantly coupled to thermally populated field modes at different temperatures. We use a formalism recently proposed, the so-called multiple parallel worlds, to consistently address the nonlinearity of e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. B 2017-05, Vol.95 (17), p.17430, Article 174302
Main Author: Ansari, Mohammad H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Coherence
Entropy
Lower bounds
Photovoltaic cells
Quantum phenomena
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Summary:We evaluate entropy production in a photovoltaic cell that is modeled by four electronic levels resonantly coupled to thermally populated field modes at different temperatures. We use a formalism recently proposed, the so-called multiple parallel worlds, to consistently address the nonlinearity of entropy in terms of density matrix. Our result shows that entropy production is the difference between two flows: a semiclassical flow that linearly depends on occupational probabilities, and another flow that depends nonlinearly on quantum coherence and has no semiclassical analog. We show that entropy production in the cells depends on environmentally induced decoherence time and energy detuning. We characterize regimes where reversal flow of information takes place from a cold to hot bath. Interestingly, we identify a lower bound on entropy production, which sets limitations on the statistics of dissipated heat in the cells.
ISSN:2469-9950
2469-9969
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.95.174302