Thermodynamic uncertainty relation in nondegenerate and degenerate maser heat engines

Abstract

We investigate the thermodynamic uncertainty relation (TUR), i.e., a tradeoff between entropy production rate and relative power fluctuations, for nondegenerate three-level and degenerate four-level maser heat engines. In the nondegenerate case, we consider two slightly different configurations of the three-level maser heat engine and contrast their degree of violation of the standard TUR. We associate their different TUR-violating properties to the phenomenon of spontaneous emission, which gives rise to an asymmetry between them. Furthermore, in the high-temperature limit, we show that the standard TUR relation is always violated for both configurations. For the degenerate four-level engine, we study the effects of noise-induced coherence on the TUR. We show that, depending on the parametric regime of operation, noise-induced coherence can either suppress or amplify the relative power fluctuations. © 2023 American Physical Society.