Enhanced Energy Transfer to an Optomechanical Piston from Indistinguishable Photons.

Thought experiments involving gases and pistons, such as Maxwell's demon and Gibbs' mixing, are central to our understanding of thermodynamics. Here, we present a quantum thermodynamic thought experiment in which the energy transfer from two photonic gases to a piston membrane grows quadratically with the number of photons for indistinguishable gases, while it grows linearly for distinguishable gases. This signature of bosonic bunching may be observed in optomechanical experiments, highlighting the potential of these systems for the realization of thermodynamic thought experiments in the quantum realm.