The thermodynamics of enhanced heat transfer: a model study

Situations where a spontaneous process of energy or matter transfer is enhanced by an external device are widespread in nature (the human sweating system, enzyme catalysis, facilitated diffusion across biomembranes, industrial heat-exchangers and so on). The thermodynamics of such processes remains, however, open. Here we study enhanced heat transfer by using a model junction immersed between two thermal baths at different temperatures Th and Tc (Th > Tc). The transferred heat power is enhanced via controlling the junction by means of external time-dependent fields. Provided that the spontaneous heat flow process is optimized over the junction Hamiltonian, any enhancement of this spontaneous process demands consumption and subsequent dissipation of work. The efficiency of the enhancement is defined via the increment in the heat power divided by the amount of work done. We show that this efficiency is bounded from above by Tc/(Th − Tc). Formally this is identical to the Carnot bound for the efficiency of ordinary refrigerators which transfer heat from cold to hot bodies. It also shares some (but not all) physical features of the Carnot bound