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Related papers: Optimal Work Extraction and the Minimum Descriptio…

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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

We propose and analyze a process that extracts useful work from a single active particle maintained at constant temperature in a harmonic potential by measuring the relative sign of the self-propulsion and the confining force and then…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-03-09 Grzegorz Szamel

Many work extraction or information erasure processes in the literature involve the raising and lowering of energy levels via external fields. But even if the actual system is treated quantum mechanically, the field is assumed to be…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2014-11-26 Max F. Frenzel , David Jennings , Terry Rudolph

We analyze the role of indirect quantum measurements in work extraction from quantum systems in nonequilibrium states. In particular, we focus on the work that can be obtained by exploiting the correlations shared between the system of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-09-24 Gonzalo Manzano , Francesco Plastina , Roberta Zambrini

Leo Szilard pointed out that Maxwell's demon can be replaced by machinery, thereby laying the foundation for understanding the physical nature of information. Szilard's information engine still serves as a canonical example after almost a…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-08-31 Susanne Still , Dorian Daimer

According to the second law of thermodynamics, for every transformation performed on a system which is in contact with an environment of fixed temperature, the extracted work is bounded by the decrease of the free energy of the system.…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-07-15 Vasco Cavina , Andrea Mari , Vittorio Giovannetti

Work extraction from a heat engine in a cycle by a quantum mechanical device (quantum "piston") is analyzed. The standard definition of work fails in the quantum domain. The correct extractable work and its efficiency bound are shown to…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2013-10-11 D. Gelbwaser-Klimovsky , R. Alicki , G. Kurizki

We put forth a notion of optimality for extracting ergotropic work, derived from an energy constraint governing the necessary dynamics for work extraction in a quantum system. Within the traditional ergotropy framework, which predicts an…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-03-12 Pritam Halder , Srijon Ghosh , Saptarshi Roy , Tamal Guha

We study experimentally work fluctuations in a Szilard engine that extracts work from information encoded as the occupancy of an electron level in a semiconductor quantum dot. We show that as the average work extracted per bit of…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2022-02-09 David Barker , Matteo Scandi , Sebastian Lehmann , Claes Thelander , Kimberly A. Dick , Martí Perarnau-Llobet , Ville F. Maisi

We quantify the prior information to infer the optimal characteristics for a constrained thermodynamic process of maximum work extraction for a pair of non-identical finite systems. The total entropy of the whole system remains conserved.…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-01-20 Preety Aneja , Harsh Katyayan , Ramandeep S. Johal

Free energy fixes the maximum work of a thermodynamic process once the state and Hamiltonian are specified. A work-extraction task asks a different question: how much average work can a single device realize across several preparations and…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-06 Sumit Rout , Aravinth Balaji Ravichandran , Paweł Horodecki , Anubhav Chaturvedi

We present a critical examination of the difficulties with the quantum versions of a lifted weight that are widely used as work storage systems in quantum thermodynamics. To overcome those difficulties, we turn to the strong connections…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-06-05 Shang-Yung Wang

Brownian information engines can extract work from thermal fluctuations by utilizing information. So far, the studies on Brownian information engines consider the system in a thermal bath; however, many processes in nature occur in a…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-07-26 Govind Paneru , Sandipan Dutta , Hyuk Kyu Pak

We present quantitative relations between work and information that are valid both for finite sized and internally correlated systems as well in the thermodynamical limit. We suggest work extraction should be viewed as a game where the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-05-13 Oscar C. O. Dahlsten , Renato Renner , Elisabeth Rieper , Vlatko Vedral

Constraints on work extraction are fundamental to our operational understanding of the thermodynamics of both classical and quantum systems. In the quantum setting, finite-time control operations typically generate coherence in the…

Thermodynamics establishes that information acquired through measurement can be converted into work, as exemplified by Maxwell's demon and Szilard engines. Most experimental realizations of information engines, however, implicitly assume…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-09 Lokesh Muruga , Felix Ginot , Sarah A. M. Loos , Clemens Bechinger

The amount of extractable work from a physical system is fundamentally connected to the information available about its state, as illustrated by Maxwell's demon and the Gibbs paradox. In standard thermodynamic protocols involving…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-02-27 Tanmoy Biswas

Aiming to explore physical limits of wind turbines, we develop a model for determining the work extractable from a compressible fluid flow. The model employs conservation of mass, energy and entropy and leads to a universal bound for the…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2020-08-12 A. E. Allahverdyan

Work extraction in quantum finite systems is an important issue in quantum thermodynamics. The optimal work extracted is called ergotropy, and it is achieved by maximizing the average work extracted over all the unitary cycles. However, an…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-04-10 Gianluca Francica , Luca Dell'Anna

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