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We study a limit cycle of a quantum Otto engine whose each cycle consists of two finite-time quantum isochoric (heating or cooling) processes and two quantum adiabatic work-extracting processes. Considering a two-level system as a working substance that weakly interacts with two reservoirs comprising an infinite number of bosons, we investigate the non-Markovian effect (short-time behavior of the reduced dynamics in the quantum isochoric processes (QIPs)) on work extraction after infinite repetition of the cycles. We focus on the parameter region where energy transferred to the reservoir can come back to the system in a short-time regime, which we call energy backflow to show partial quantum-mechanical reversibility. As a situation completely different from macroscopic thermodynamics, we find that the interaction energy is finite and negative by evaluating the average energy change of the reservoir during the QIPs by means of the full-counting statistics, corresponding to the two-point measurements. The feature leads us to the following findings: (1) the Carnot theorem is consistent with a definition of work including the interaction energy, although the commonly used definition of work excluding the interaction leads to a serious conflict with the thermodynamic law, and (2) the energy backflow can increase the work extraction. Our findings show that we need to pay attention to the interaction energy in designing a quantum Otto engine operated in a finite time, which requires us to include the non-Markovian effect, even when the system-reservoir interaction is weak., Comment: 13pages, 7 figures

We provide a general formula of quantum transfer that includes the non-adiabatic effect under periodic environmental modulation by using full counting statistics in Hilbert-Schmidt space. Applying the formula to an anharmonic junction model that interacts with two bosonic environments within the Markovian approximation, we find that the quantum transfer is divided into the adiabatic (dynamical and geometrical phases) and non-adiabatic contributions. This extension shows the dependence of quantum transfer on the initial condition of the anharmonic junction just before the modulation, as well as the characteristic environmental parameters such as interaction strength and cut-off frequency of spectral density. We show that the non-adiabatic contribution represents the reminiscent effect of past modulation including the transition from the initial condition of the anharmonic junction to a steady state determined by the very beginning of the modulation. This enables us to tune the frequency range of modulation, whereby we can obtain the quantum flux corresponding to the geometrical phase by setting the initial condition of the anharmonic junction., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures; mistypes are corrected

We demonstrate that local application of a weak external field increases distinguishability between states with and without initial correlations. We consider the case where a two-level system linearly and adiabatically interacts with an infinite number of bosons. We evaluate the trace distance (or, equivalently, the Hilbert-Schmidt distance) between the quantum states which evolve from two kinds of initial states; the correlated Gibbs state and its uncorrelated marginal state. We find that the trace distance increases above its initial value for any and all parameter settings. This indicates that we can explore the existence of initial system-environment correlations with applying a local external field, which causes the breakdown of the contractivity., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures