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The most succinct manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics is the limitation the Landauer principle imposes on the amount of heat a Maxwell demon (MD) can convert into free energy per single bit of information obtained in a…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2015-01-29 J. V. Koski , V. F. Maisi , J. P. Pekola , D. V. Averin

In apparent contradiction to the laws of thermodynamics, Maxwell's demon is able to cyclically extract work from a system in contact with a thermal bath exploiting the information about its microstate. The resolution of this paradox…

The Szil\'ard engine is a mechanism (akin to Maxwell's demon) for converting information into energy, which seemingly violates the second law of thermodynamics. Originally a classical thought experiment, it was extended to a quantized…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-08-29 Paul Davies , Logan Thomas , George Zahariade

Maxwell's demon is a famous thought experiment and a paradigm of the thermodynamics of information. It is related to Szilard's engine, a two-state information-to-work conversion device in which the demon performs single measurements and…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-05-11 Paul Raux , Felix Ritort

We investigate the extraction of thermodynamic work by a Maxwell's demon in a multipartite quantum correlated system. We begin by adopting the standard model of a Maxwell's demon as a Turing machine, either in a classical or quantum setup…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2014-12-10 Helena C. Braga , Clodoaldo C. Rulli , Thiago R. de Oliveira , Marcelo S. Sarandy

In a recent paper [Vaikuntanathan and Jarzynski, Phys. Rev. E {\bf 83}, 061120 (2011), arXiv:1105.1744] a model was introduced whereby work could be extracted from a thermal bath by measuring the energy of a particle that was thermalized by…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-17 Joakim Bergli

We propose and analyze Maxwell's demon based on a single qubit with avoided level crossing. Its operation cycle consists of adiabatic drive to the point of minimum energy separation, measurement of the qubit state, and conditional feedback.…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-01-20 J. P. Pekola , D. S. Golubev , D. V. Averin

Szilard's one-molecule engine is operated by a Maxwell's demon attempting to convert heat to work. It is argued here that when using the demon to relate information to work (Landauer's principle), the demon's goal must be regarded as an…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2015-04-29 J. H. van Hateren

Maxwell's demon explores the role of information in physical processes. Employing information about microscopic degrees of freedom, this "intelligent observer" is capable of compensating entropy production (or extracting work), apparently…

We report an experimental realisation of Maxwell's demon in a photonic setup. We show that a measurement at the single-photon level followed by a feed-forward operation allows the extraction of work from intense thermal light into an…

We propose a new way of looking at the quantum Maxwell's demon problem in terms of conditional action. A "conditional action" on a system is a unitary time evolution, selected according to the result of a previous measurement, which can…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-10-28 Heinz-Jürgen Schmidt

We introduce a family of Maxwellian Demons for which correlations among information bearing degrees of freedom can be calculated exactly and in compact analytical form. This allows one to precisely determine Demon functional thermodynamic…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-03-23 A. B. Boyd , D. Mandal , J. P. Crutchfield

We theoretically study the entropy production and the work extracted from a system connected to two reservoirs by periodic modulations of the electrochemical potentials of the reservoirs and the parameter of a system Hamiltonian under…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-07-18 Ryosuke Yoshii , Hisao Hayakawa

The second law of thermodynamics is probabilistic in nature. Its formulation requires that the state of a system be described by a probability distribution. A natural question, thereby, arises as to whether a prior knowledge about the state…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-04-11 P. S. Pal , A. M. Jayannavar

The common saying, that information is power, takes a rigorous form in stochastic thermodynamics, where a quantitative equivalence between the two helps explain the paradox of Maxwell's demon in its ability to reduce entropy. In the present…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-03-09 Amirhossein Taghvaei , Olga Movilla Miangolarra , Rui Fu , Yongxin Chen , Tryphon T. Georgiou

The so-called information-thermodynamics link has been created in a series of works starting from Maxwell demon and established by the idea of transforming information into work in the though experiment of Szilard which then evolved into…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-01-23 Robert Alicki

Energy extraction from a measured quantum system is a cornerstone of information thermodynamics as illustrated by Maxwell's demon. The nonequilibrium physics of many-particle systems is additionally strongly influenced by quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-12-05 Josef Hloušek , Tobias Denzler , Vojtěch Švarc , Miroslav Ježek , Eric Lutz , Radim Filip

In 1929, Leo Szilard invented a feedback protocol in which a hypothetical intelligence called Maxwell's demon pumps heat from an isothermal environment and transduces it to work. After an intense controversy that lasted over eighty years;…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2012-02-21 Shoichi Toyabe , Takahiro Sagawa , Masahito Ueda , Eiro Muneyuki , Masaki Sano

It is demonstrated that Maxwell's demon can be used to allow a machine to extract energy from a heat bath by use of information that is processed by the demon at a remote location. The model proposed here effectively replaces transmission…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2017-06-06 S. Hossenfelder

Thought experiments like Maxwell's Demon or the Feynman-Smoluchowski Ratchet can help in pursuing the microscopic origin of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Here we present a more sophisticated physical system than a ratchet, consisting of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-09-10 Simon Bienewald , Diego Marcel Fieguth , James R. Anglin