Non-Ideal Measurement Heat Engines

Abstract

We discuss the role of non-ideal measurements within the context of measurement engines by contrasting examples of measurement engines which have the same work output but with varying amounts of entanglement. Accounting for the cost of resetting, correlating the engine to a pointer state and also the cost of cooling the pointer state, we show that for a given work output, thermally correlated engines can outperform corresponding entanglement engines. We also show that the optimal efficiency of the thermally correlated measurement engine is achieved with a higher temperature pointer than the pointer temperature of the optimal entanglement engine.