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Related papers: The Broken Engine of Szilard

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We propose a variation of the classical Szilard engine that uses a porous piston. Such an engine requires neither information about the position of the particle, nor the removal and subsequent insertion of the piston when resetting the…

Classical Physics · Physics 2022-08-18 Carlos E. Álvarez , Manuel Camargo , Gabriel Téllez

We consider a Szilard engine in one dimension, consisting of a single particle of mass $m$, moving between a piston of mass $M$, and a heat reservoir at temperature $T$. In addition to an external force, the piston experiences repeated…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-08-01 Deepak Bhat , Abhishek Dhar , Anupam Kundu , Sanjib Sabhapandit

Szil\'ard's information engine is a canonical example in the field of thermodynamics of information. We realize experimentally a macroscopic many-particle Szil\'ard engine that consists of active particles and use it to lift a mass against…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-08-22 Omer Chor , Amir Sohachi , Rémi Goerlich , Eran Rosen , Saar Rahav , Yael Roichman

In Szilard's engine, measurement and feedback allows to extract work from an equilibrium environment, a process otherwise forbidden by the laws of thermodynamics. Recent theoretical developments have established fluctuation theorems and…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2025-11-14 David Barker , Sebastian Lehmann , Kimberly A. Dick , Peter Samuelsson , Ville Maisi , Patrick P. Potts

A Szilard Engine is a hypothetical device which is able to extract work from a single thermal reservoir by measuring the position of particles within the engine. We derive the amount of work that can be extracted from such a device in the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-05-23 Martin Plesch , Oscar Dahlsten , John Goold , Vlatko Vedral

The Szilard engine stands as a compelling illustration of the intricate interplay between information and thermodynamics. While at thermodynamic equilibrium, the apparent breach of the second law of thermodynamics was reconciled by Landauer…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-01-17 Luca Cocconi , Letian Chen

In mathematical physical analyses of Szilard's engine and Maxwell's demon, a general assumption (explicit or implicit) is that one can neglect the energy needed for relocating the piston in Szilard's engine and for driving the trap door in…

General Physics · Physics 2012-06-26 Laszlo B. Kish , Claes G. Granqvist

In the Second Law of Thermodynamics which is a macroscopic physical law that states that in any isolated system, entropy can only increase and order, or organization, can only decrease. This means that in the long run, energy will always…

Classical Physics · Physics 2021-11-25 Srinivasa Rao. P

A symmetry breaking (SB) involves an abrupt change in the set of microstates that a system can explore. This change has unavoidable thermodynamic implications. According to Boltzmann's microscopic interpretation of entropy, a shrinkage of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-17 Edgar Roldan , Ignacio A Martinez , Juan MR Parrondo , Dmitri Petrov

We have found the optimal condition of the work performed by the quantum Szilard engine (SZE) containing multi-particles. Usually the optimal work of a cyclic engine is achieved when the whole thermodynamic process is reversible. Although…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2014-01-09 Hee Joon Jeon , Sang Wook Kim

Isothermal information engines operate by extracting net work from a single heat bath through measurement and feedback control. In this work, we analyze a realistic active Szilard engine operating on a single active particle by means of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-05-15 Luca Cocconi , Paolo Malgaretti , Holger Stark

The role of the third law of thermodynamics in the Szilard engine has been addressed. If the ground state is non-degenerate, the entropy production defined as the work extractable from the engine divided by temperature vanishes as…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2011-12-15 Kang-Hwan Kim , Sang Wook Kim

We discuss the possibility of extraction of energy from a single heat bath in a cyclic process, under some special initial conditions. We give an explicit example in which a system initially prepared in a microcanonical ensemble, is able to…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2012-09-11 Rahul Marathe , J. M. R. Parrondo

Inspired by the available examples of Microcanonical Szil\'ard Engines and by the original Szil\'ard Engine, we devise a system with two degrees of freedom whose ensemble average energy, starting with a microcanical ensemble, decreases…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-08-23 Artur Soriani , Marcus V. S. Bonança

In a classic thought experiment, Szilard suggested a heat engine where a single particle, for example an atom or a molecule, is confined in a container coupled to a single heat bath. The container can be separated into two parts by a…

We derive the work performed in the Szilard engine (SZE) by using dissipative work formula of non-equilibrium thermodynamics developed in Kawai et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 080602 (2007). The work is described as the difference of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2011-08-29 Kang-Hwan Kim , Sang Wook Kim

The Szilard engine is the simplest possible engine, composed only of one or more particles in a box. The box is then immersed in a heat bath and partitioned into two parts by a wall. It is known that in the cold temperature limit, one may…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2013-08-08 T. K. Chuan , D. Kaszlikowski

We study the efficiency of a single particle Szilard and Carnot engine. Within a first order correction to the quasi-static limit, the work distribution is found to be Gaussian and the correction factor to average work and efficiency only…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-09-09 Karel Proesmans , Cedric Driesen , Bart Cleuren , Christian Van den Broeck

The standard relations between information theory and thermodynamics are challenged. The Szilard engine is revisited and the bound proposed by Landauer is replaced by a different one which includes errors in information processing. Instead…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2014-02-12 Robert Alicki

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
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