Producing useful work in a cycle by absorbing heat from a single thermal reservoir: An investigation on a locally nonchaotic energy barrier

In the current research, we investigate the concept of spontaneously nonequilibrium dimension (SND), and show that a SND-based system can break the second law of thermodynamics. The main characteristic of the SND is the inherent nonequilibrium particle crossing ratio. A locally nonchaotic energy barrier is employed to form the model system. On the one hand, when the barrier width is much smaller than the mean free path of the particles, the system cannot reach thermodynamic equilibrium; on the other hand, the nonequilibrium particle distribution allows for production of useful work in a cycle by absorbing heat from a single thermal reservoir. Such system performance is demonstrated by a Monte Carlo simulation. It should be attributed to the unbalanced cross-influence of the thermally correlated thermodynamic forces, incompatible with the conventional framework of statistical mechanics. No Maxwell's demon is involved. Similar effects may be achieved by a number of variants, e.g., when the barrier is switchable or there are distributed nonchaotic traps.