This research if funded by the DFG FOR 2724, recent news are found here.
Since the onset of the industrial revolution, heat engines have played a prominent role in our modern civilization. In general, heat engines convert thermal energy into mechanical motion and form the basis for all motorized vehicles from cars to airplanes. Simultaneously, in the past decades miniaturization has led to the development of increasingly smaller devices. The thermodynamics team in Mainz deals with the question how those machines perform at the ultimate single-particle level. With our analysis of fluctuations both in energy and phase, we contribute to the emerging field of quantum thermodynamics. We are part of a newly established Forschergruppe, funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation) named “Thermische Maschinen in der Quantenwelt”.