Research from The University of Manchester has thrown new light on the use of miniaturised ‘heat engines’ that could one day help power nanoscale machines like quantum computers.
Heat engines are devices that turn thermal energy into a useful form known as ‘work’ which can provide power – like any other engine.
Dr Ahsan Nazir, a Senior Lecturer and EPSRC Fellow based at Manchester’s Photon Science Institute and School of Physics and Astronomy, wanted to see how heat engines performed at the quantum level, a sub-atomic environment where the classical laws of physics don’t always apply.
