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Hi! My name is Elsa Danielsson and I’m a PhD student at Chalmers University of Technology. I am part of Janine Splettstößer’s group and work on quantum thermodynamics and transport. In particular, I’m interested in nonthermal resources—collections of electrons that cannot be described by temperature—for energy conversion, like quantum engines and refrigerators.
Recent
November 28, 2025
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Together with Janine Splettstößer and Henning Kirchberg, I published a paper on designing nanoelectronic devices for energy conversion. We present a general theoretical method for finding the best transmission properties given a certain task, like maximizing an output current or an efficiency. The method is valid for any type of current–like electric, energy, and even entropy–and yields a remarkably simple result: the optimal transmission probability is a series of boxcars in the energy spectrum regardless of the type of current or electron distribution. With the method, we also demonstrate that nonthermal resources can give a much higher performance than thermal counterparts.
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Read more here: Optimizing energy conversion with nonthermal resources in steady-state quantum devices