English

A many-body Szilard engine with giant number fluctuations

Statistical Mechanics 2023-08-22 v2 Soft Condensed Matter

Abstract

Szil\'ard's information engine is a canonical example in the field of thermodynamics of information. We realize experimentally a macroscopic many-particle Szil\'ard engine that consists of active particles and use it to lift a mass against gravity. We show that the extractable work per cycle increases when the raised weight is changed more gradually during the process. Interestingly, we find that the ideal extractable work grows with the number of particles due to giant number fluctuations. This is in contrast to the calculated behavior of a similar engine operating on thermal particles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.10961,
  title  = {A many-body Szilard engine with giant number fluctuations},
  author = {Omer Chor and Amir Sohachi and Rémi Goerlich and Eran Rosen and Saar Rahav and Yael Roichman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.10961},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

6 pages 5 figures