Optomechanical Stirling heat engine driven by feedback-controlled light

Abstract

We propose and analyze a microscopic Stirling heat engine based on an optomechanical system. The working fluid is a single vibrational mode of a mechanical resonator, which interacts by radiation pressure with a feedback-controlled optical cavity. The cavity light is used to engineer the thermal reservoirs and to steer the resonator through a thermodynamic cycle. In particular, the feedback is used to properly modulate the light fluctuations inside the cavity and hence to realize efficient thermodynamic transformations with realistic optomechanical devices.