The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Efficiency of a Carnot engine at maximum power output
Abstract
The efficiency of a Carnot engine is treated for the case where the power output is limited by the rates of heat transfer to and from the working substance. It is shown that the efficiency, η, at maximum power output is given by the expression η = 1 − (T2/T1)1/2 where T1 and T2 are the respective temperatures of the heat source and heat sink. It is also shown that the efficiency of existing engines is well described by the above result.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Stochastic thermodynamics, fluctuation theorems and molecular machines
Seifert, U. (2012) · Reports on Progress in Physics · doi:10.1088/0034-4885/75/12/126001 · Cited by 3,300
Quantum Thermodynamics: A Dynamical Viewpoint
Kosloff, R. (2013) · Entropy · doi:10.3390/e15062100 · Cited by 837
Quantum thermodynamic cycles and quantum heat engines
Quan, H. T., Liu, Y.-X., Sun, C. P., & Nori, F. (2007) · Physical Review E · doi:10.1103/physreve.76.031105 · Cited by 788
Quantum Heat Engines and Refrigerators: Continuous Devices
Kosloff, R., & Levy, A. (2014) · Annual Review of Physical Chemistry · doi:10.1146/annurev-physchem-040513-103724 · Cited by 561
Thermodynamic Efficiency at Maximum Power
Van den Broeck, C. (2005) · Physical Review Letters · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.95.190602 · Cited by 555
Metadata
- Authors
- Curzon, F. L., & Ahlborn, B.
- Venue
- American Journal of Physics
- Published
- 1975-01-01
- Volume
- 43
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 22-24
- ISSN
- 0002-9505 (ISSN-L)
- 1943-2909
- OpenAlex
- W2084255008
- Cited by
- 2,317
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 5.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Efficiency of a Carnot engine at maximum power output. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1119/1.10023
- The paper
- Curzon, F. L., & Ahlborn, B. (1975). Efficiency of a Carnot engine at maximum power output. American Journal of Physics. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.10023
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
