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This work provides an overview of key historical developments in the formulation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, focusing on the notorious challenge of ``Maxwell's Demon'', a hypothetical creature who could presumably violate that law.…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-19 R. E. Kastner

The interplay between information, dissipation, and control is reshaping our understanding of thermodynamics in feedback-regulated systems. We develop the informational Onsager-Machlup principle, a generalized variational framework that…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-04-30 Kento Yasuda , Kenta Ishimoto , Shigeyuki Komura

We study the stochastic dynamics of Brownian particles in a heat bath and subject to an active feedback control by an external, Maxwell's demon-like agent. The agent uses the information of the velocity of a particle and reduces its thermal…

Classical Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Kyung Hyuk Kim , Hong Qian

We establish the fluctuation theorem in the presence of information exchange between a nonequilibrium system and other degrees of freedom such as an observer and a feedback controller, where the amount of information exchange is added to…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-05 Takahiro Sagawa , Masahito Ueda

Emerging evidence suggests that physical systems operating as Maxwell demons, in which some subsystem of a larger system extracts heat energy from its environment in an apparent local violation of the second law, are commonplace throughout…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-03-04 Matthew P Leighton

In many complex systems, whether biological or artificial, the thermodynamic costs of communication among their components are large. These systems also tend to split information transmitted between any two components across multiple…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-02-12 Farita Tasnim , Nahuel Freitas , David H. Wolpert

In order to transmit biochemical signals, biological regulatory systems dissipate energy with concomitant entropy production. Additionally, signaling often takes place in challenging environmental conditions. In a simple model regulatory…

Molecular Networks · Quantitative Biology 2015-09-30 Francesca Mancini , Matteo Marsili , Aleksandra M. Walczak

Cells produce RNA and proteins via molecular templating networks. We show that information transmission in such networks is bounded by functions of a simple thermodynamic property of the network, regardless of complexity. Surprisingly,…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-06-10 Benjamin Qureshi , Jenny M. Poulton , Thomas E. Ouldridge

We show that a rate of conditional Shannon entropy reduction, characterizing the learning of an internal process about an external process, is bounded by the thermodynamic entropy production. This approach allows for the definition of an…

Biological Physics · Physics 2014-11-07 Andre C. Barato , David Hartich , Udo Seifert

A demonic being, introduced by Maxwell, to miraculously create thermal non-equilibrium and violate the Second law of thermodynamics, has been among the most intriguing and elusive wishful concepts for over 150 years. Maxwell and his…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2020-04-02 Milivoje M. Kostic

We investigate a measurement-feedback process of repeated operations with time delay. During a finite-time interval, measurement on the system is performed and the feedback protocol derived from the measurement outcome is applied with time…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-01-08 Chulan Kwon , Jaegon Um , Hyunggyu Park

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

Energy transfer and information transmission are two fundamental aspects of nature. They are seemingly unrelated, while recent findings suggest that a deep connection between them is to be discovered. This amounts to asking: Can we phrase…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-02-07 Chung-Yun Hsieh

This article introduces the physics of information in the context of molecular biology and genomics. Entropy and information, the two central concepts of Shannon's theory of information and communication, are often confused with each other…

Biomolecules · Quantitative Biology 2007-05-23 Christoph Adami

Living cells are continually exposed to environmental signals that vary in time. These signals are detected and processed by biochemical networks, which are often highly stochastic. To understand how cells cope with a fluctuating…

Molecular Networks · Quantitative Biology 2012-06-01 Wiet de Ronde , Filipe Tostevin , Pieter Rein ten Wolde

The relationship between entropy and information is reviewed, taking into account that information is stored in macroscopic degrees of freedom, such as the order parameter in a system exhibiting spontaneous symmetry breaking. It is shown…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2009-10-31 Juan M. R. Parrondo

The relation between the theory of entanglement and thermodynamics is very tight: a thermodynamic theory of quantum entanglement, as well as the establishment of rigorous formal connections between the laws of thermodynamics and the…

Information thermodynamics relates the rate of change of mutual information between two interacting subsystems to their thermodynamics when the joined system is described by a bipartite stochastic dynamics satisfying local detailed balance.…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-08-05 Emanuele Penocchio , Francesco Avanzini , Massimiliano Esposito

Inter and intra-cellular signaling are essential for individual cells to execute various physiological tasks and accurately respond to changes in their environment. Signaling is carried out via diffusible molecules, the transport of which…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-10-13 Sumantra Sarkar , Sandeep Choubey

The concept of autonomy is fundamental for understanding biological organization and the evolutionary transitions of living systems. Understanding how a system constitutes itself as an individual, cohesive, self-organized entity is a…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2019-02-07 Miguel Aguilera , Ezequiel Di Paolo