Ratcheting up energy by means of measurement
Abstract
Description
The destruction of quantum coherence can pump energy into a system. For our examples this is paradoxical since the destroyed correlations are ordinarily considered negligible. Mathematically the explanation is straightforward and physically one can identify the degrees of freedom supplying this energy. Nevertheless, the energy input can be calculated without specific reference to those degrees of freedom.
To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett
To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett