Recent physics graduate Zack Smith publishes first paper

Undergraduate researcher and recent physics graduate Zack Smith (Class 2020) publishes his first paper. Together with postdoctoral researcher Dr. Pal and Assistant Professor Dr. Deffner, Zack extended the analysis of endoreversible Otto engines. For a generic class of working mediums, whose internal energy is proportional to some power of the temperature, the showed that no engine can achieve the Carnot efficiency at finite power. However, it was also found that for the specific example of photonic engines the efficiency at maximal power is larger than the Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency.

The findings of this study were published in the Journal of Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics (https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/jnet/ahead-of-print/article-10.1515-jnet-2020-0039/article-10.1515-jnet-2020-0039.xml)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jnet-2020-0039