English

An omniscient Maxwell's demon

Atomic Physics 2018-09-13 v1

Abstract

We demonstrate highly filled 3D arrays of neutral atoms by moving individual atoms in a 3D optical lattice. Starting from a randomly half-filled 5x5x5 optical lattice of Cesium atoms, a sorting algorithm calculates and implements a sequence of high fidelity targeted state flips and state dependent motion steps to fill a sub-lattice in real time. We achieve a filling fraction of ~97% and a perfect filling rate of 30%. With 89% of the atoms cooled to the 3D vibrational ground state, the sorting procedure reduces the configurational entropy by a factor of 8 and the total system entropy by a factor of 2.44. The sorting process is analogous to a Maxwell's demon.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1806.02403,
  title  = {An omniscient Maxwell's demon},
  author = {Aishwarya Kumar and Tsung-Yao Wu and Felipe Giraldo Mejia and David S. Weiss},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.02403},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

19 pages, 4 figures, Methods section, 2 extended data figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T02:21:45.125Z