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Related papers: Maxwell's Demon and Data Compression

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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

Landauer argued that the process of erasing the information stored in a memory device incurs an energy cost in the form of a minimum amount of mechanical work. We find, however, that this energy cost can be reduced to zero by paying a cost…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2011-06-02 Joan A. Vaccaro , Stephen M. Barnett

Maxwell's demon is the quintessential example of information control, which is necessary for designing quantum devices. In thermodynamics, the demon is an intelligent being who utilizes the entropic nature of information to sort excitations…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-05-05 Kasper Poulsen , Marco Majland , Seth Lloyd , Morten Kjaergaard , Nikolaj T. Zinner

We review theory of information thermodynamics which incorporates effects of measurement and feedback into nonequilibrium thermodynamics of a small system, and discuss how the second law of thermodynamics should be extended for such…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2012-02-07 Takahiro Sagawa , Masahito Ueda

Autonomous Maxwell demon is a new type of information engine proposed by Mandal and Jarzynski, which can produce work by exploiting an information tape. Here, we show that a stochastic resetting mechanism can be used to improve the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-09-27 Ruicheng Bao , Zhiyu Cao , Jiming Zheng , Zhonghuai Hou

We propose a finite-time quantum Szilard engine (QSE) with a quantum particle with spin as the working substance (WS) to accelerate the operation of information engines. We introduce a Maxwell's demon (MD) to probe the spin state within a…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-19 Tan-Ji Zhou , Yu-Han Ma , C. P. Sun

Resolution of the century-long paradox on Maxwell's demon reveals a deep connection between information theory and thermodynamics. Although initially introduced as a thought experiment, Maxwell's demon can now be implemented in several…

I dispute the conventional claim that the second law of thermodynamics is saved from a "Maxwell's Demon" by the entropy cost of information erasure, and show that instead it is measurement that incurs the entropy cost. Thus Brillouin, who…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-07-22 R. E. Kastner

A CMOS-based implementation of an autonomous Maxwell's demon was recently proposed (Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 120602) to demonstrate that a Maxwell demon can still work at macroscopic scales, provided that its power supply is scaled…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-02-08 Nahuel Freitas , Massimiliano Esposito

It is generally accepted, following Landauer and Bennett, that the process of measurement involves no minimum entropy cost, but the erasure of information in resetting the memory register of a computer to zero requires dissipating heat into…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 J. Bub

We study an autonomous model of a Maxwell demon that works by rectifying thermal fluctuations of chemical reactions. It constitutes the chemical analog of a recently studied electronic demon. We characterize its scaling behavior in the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-11-29 Massimo Bilancioni , Massimiliano Esposito , Nahuel Freitas

Maxwell demons are creatures that are imagined to be able to reduce the entropy of a system without performing any work on it. Conventionally, such a Maxwell demon's intricate action consists of measuring individual particles and…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2019-12-09 Rafael Sánchez , Janine Splettstoesser , Robert S. Whitney

Nearly all theoretical analyses of the Maxwell's demon focus on its energetic and entropic costs of operation. Here, we focus on its rate of operation. In our model, a demon's rate limitation stems from its finite response time and gate…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-08-27 Nathaniel Rupprecht , Dervis Vural

It is widely accepted that information erasure entails heat dissipation. Here we analyze asymmetric memory states to show that this energy cost can be shuffled around to any step in a write-erase cycle and need not accompany the logically…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 M. Maissam Barkeshli

We propose a setup based on two coupled quantum dots where thermodynamics of a measurement can be quantitatively characterized. The information obtained in the measurement can be utilized by performing feedback in a manner apparently…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-04-06 Aki Kutvonen , Takahiro Sagawa , Tapio Ala-Nissilä

A diffusive process that is reset to its origin at random times, so-called stochastic resetting (SR), is an ubiquitous expedient in many natural systems . Yet, beyond its ability to improve the efficiency of target searching, SR is a true…

We study the physical mechanism of Maxwell's Demon (MD) helping to do extra work in thermodynamic cycles, by describing measurement of position, insertion of wall and information erasing of MD in a quantum mechanical fashion. The heat…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-05-19 H. Dong , D. Z. Xu , C. P. Sun

The limit of energy saving in the control of small systems has recently attracted much interest due to the concept refinement of the Maxwell demon. Inspired by a newly proposed set of fluctuation theorems, we report the first experimental…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-09-02 L. -L. Yan , J. -T. Bu , Q. Zeng , K. Zhang , K. -F. Cui , F. Zhou , S. -L. Su , L. Chen , J. Wang , Gang Chen , M. Feng

Although there is not a complete "proof" of the second law of thermo- dynamics based on microscopic dynamics, two properties of Hamiltonian systems have been used to prove the impossibility of work extraction from a single thermal…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-04-22 Juan M. R. Parrondo , Léo Granger

The essence of both classical and quantum engines is to extract useful energy (work) from stochastic energy sources, e.g. thermal baths. In Maxwell's demon engines, work extraction is assisted by a feedback control based on measurements…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2017-07-11 Cyril Elouard , David Herrera-Martí , Benjamin Huard , Alexia Auffèves