Nonequilibrium formulation of varying-temperature bit erasure
Abstract
Landauer's principle states that erasing a bit of information at fixed temperature T costs at least kT ln 2 units of work. Here we investigate erasure at varying temperature, to which Landauer's result does not apply. We formulate bit erasure as a stochastic nonequilibrium process involving a compression of configuration space, with physical and logical states associated in a symmetric way. Erasure starts and ends at temperature T, but temperature can otherwise vary with time in an arbitrary way. Defined in this way, erasure is governed by a set of nonequilibrium fluctuation relations that show that varying-temperature erasure can done with less work than k T ln 2. As a result, erasure and the complementary process of bit randomization can be combined to form a work-producing engine cycle.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2312.16195,
title = {Nonequilibrium formulation of varying-temperature bit erasure},
author = {Stephen Whitelam},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.16195},
year = {2023}
}