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If the work per cycle of a quantum heat engine is averaged over an appropriate prior distribution for an external parameter $a$, the work becomes optimal at Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency. More general priors of the form $\Pi(a) \propto…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-05-18 Ramandeep S. Johal

We show that work can be extracted from a two-level system (spin) coupled to a bosonic thermal bath. This is possible due to different initial temperatures of the spin and the bath, both positive (no spin population inversion) and is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-11-10 A. E. Allahverdyan , R. Serral Gracia , Th. M. Nieuwenhuizen

Information engines can convert thermal fluctuations of a bath at temperature $T$ into work at rates of order $k_\mathrm{B}T$ per relaxation time of the system. We show experimentally that such engines, when in contact with a bath that is…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-12-25 Tushar K. Saha , Jannik Ehrich , Momčilo Gavrilov , Susanne Still , David A. Sivak , John Bechhoefer

The study of stochastic thermodynamic machines is one of the main topics in nonequilibrium thermodynamics. In this study, within the framework of Fokker-Planck equation, and using the method of characteristics of partial differential…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-04-03 Yunxin Zhang

Optimal transport theory, originally developed in the 18th century for civil engineering, has since become a powerful optimization framework across disciplines, from generative AI to cell biology. In physics, it has recently been shown to…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-12-02 Shingo Oikawa , Yohei Nakayama , Sosuke Ito , Takahiro Sagawa , Shoichi Toyabe

The possibility of extracting more work from a physical system thanks to the information obtained from measurements has been a topic of fundamental interest in the context of thermodynamics since the formulation of the Maxwell's demon…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-03-31 Seyed Navid Elyasi , Matteo A. C. Rossi , Marco G. Genoni

By developing and leveraging an explicit molecular realisation of a measurement-and-feedback-powered Szilard engine, we investigate the extraction of work from complex environments by minimal machines with finite capacity for memory and…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-09-04 Rory A. Brittain , Nick S. Jones , Thomas E. Ouldridge

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 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 formulate the work output and efficiency for linear irreversible heat engines working between a finite-sized hot heat source and an infinite-sized cold heat reservoir until the total system reaches the final thermal equilibrium state…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-17 Yuki Izumida , Koji Okuda

In this work we have calculated analytically the work extraction in multi-particle Szilard engine. Unlike the previous studies, here we have introduced the biasing in the measurement procedure by inserting the partition at an arbitrary…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-12-22 P. S. Pal , A. M. Jayannavar

Landauer's Principle states that the energy cost of information processing must exceed the product of the temperature and the change in Shannon entropy of the information-bearing degrees of freedom. However, this lower bound is achievable…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-01-01 A. B. Boyd , A. Patra , C. Jarzynski , J. P. Crutchfield

In the analysis of any type of system, granting maximum information extraction from its data is non-trivial. Confidence in successful information extraction typically builds on prior knowledge of the studied system or on the user's…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2026-01-01 Matteo Becchi , Giovanni Maria Pavan

We consider a Geometric Brownian Information Engine to explore the effects of finite cycle time $(\tau)$ on the extractable work, power, and efficiency. We incorporate an error-free feedback controller that converts the information obtained…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-06-23 Syed Yunus Ali , Rafna Rafeek , Debasish Mondal

Many physical, biological, and even social systems are faced with the problem of how to efficiently harvest free energy from an environment that can have many possible states, yet only have a limited number of harvesting protocols to choose…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-12-04 Harrison Hartle , David Wolpert , Andrew Stier , Christopher P. Kempes , Gonzalo Manzano

We study the elementary problem of moving an active particle by a trap with minimum work input. We show analytically that (open-loop) optimal protocols are not affected by activity, but work fluctuations are always increased. For…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-07-10 Rosalba Garcia-Millan , Janik Schüttler , Michael E. Cates , Sarah A. M. Loos

When constructing models of the world, we aim for optimal compressions: models that include as few details as possible while remaining as accurate as possible. But which details -- or features measured in data -- should we choose to include…

Quantitative Methods · Quantitative Biology 2025-05-06 David P. Carcamo , Nicholas J. Weaver , Purushottam D. Dixit , Christopher W. Lynn

Landauer's principle states that erasure of each bit of information in a system requires at least a unit of energy $k_B T \ln 2$ to be dissipated. In return, the blank bit may possibly be utilized to extract usable work of the amount $k_B T…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2018-06-20 A. Mert Bozkurt , Baris Pekerten , Inanc Adagideli

In an asymmetric Szilard engine model of Maxwell's demon, we show the equivalence between information theoretical and thermodynamic entropies when the demon erases information optimally. The work gain by the engine can be exactly canceled…

Classical Physics · Physics 2011-12-13 Akio Hosoya , Koji Maruyama , Yutaka Shikano

Quantum thermal states are known to be passive, as required by the second law of thermodynamics. This paper investigates the potential for work extraction by coupling a thermal bath to a qubit of either spin, fermionic, or topological type,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-29 Jhh-Jing Hong , Feng-Li Lin