No-Go Theorem for Quantum Heat Engines Powered Purely by Quantum Measurements in the Steady Regime
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2604.22376 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 24 Apr 2026] Title:No-Go Theorem for Quantum Heat Engines Powered Purely by Quantum Measurements in the Steady Regime Authors:Kenta Koshihara, Kazuya Yuasa View a PDF of the paper titled No-Go Theorem for Quantum Heat Engines Powered Purely by Quantum Measurements in the Steady Regime, by Kenta Koshihara and 1 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:We study the thermodynamics of a quantum measurement-powered engine that converts energy injected by measurement backaction into work. We consider an engine with a finite-dimensional working substance, driven purely by quantum measurements, i.e., by bare quantum measurements, without feedback control or thermal contact in the thermodynamic cycle. On the basis of a Poincaré-like recurrence theorem for general quantum channels, we prove a no-go result for work extraction from such an engine in the steady regime. In the steady regime, quantum measurements become nondisturbing and do not inject energy into the working substance. Consequently, no work can be extracted. This result reveals the necessity of an entropy-decreasing process, such as feedback control or thermal contact, for work extraction in steady-cycle measurement-powered engines. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) Cite as: arXiv:2604.22376 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2604.22376v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.22376 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Kenta Koshihara [view email] [v1] Fri, 24 Apr 2026 09:10:44 UTC (205 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled No-Go Theorem for Quantum Heat Engines Powered Purely by Quantum Measurements in the Steady Regime, by Kenta Koshihara and 1 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.stat-mech References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)