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Related papers: Partially Observable Szilard Engines

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The second law of thermodynamics is probabilistic in nature. Its formulation requires that the state of a system be described by a probability distribution. A natural question, thereby, arises as to whether a prior knowledge about the state…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-04-11 P. S. Pal , A. M. Jayannavar

The out of equilibrium nature of active systems can be exploited for the design of information-based engines. We design two types of an active Szilard engine that use a Maxwell daemon to extract work from an active bath composed of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-12-07 P. Malgaretti , H. Stark

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 (SZE) is the quintessence of Maxwell's demon, which can extract the work from a heat bath by utilizing information. We present the first complete quantum analysis of the SZE, and derive an analytic expression of the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2011-02-23 Sang Wook Kim , Takahiro Sagawa , Simone De Liberato , Masahito Ueda

The interplay between thermal machines and quantum correlations is of great interest in both quantum thermodynamics and quantum information science. Recently, a quantum Szil\'ard engine has been proposed, showing that the quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-11-03 Feng-Jui Chan , Yi-Te Huang , Jhen-Dong Lin , Huan-Yu Ku , Jui-Sheng Chen , Hong-Bin Chen , Yueh-Nan Chen

We study a quantum Szilard engine that is not powered by heat drawn from a thermal reservoir, but rather by projective measurements. The engine is constituted of a system $\mathcal{S}$, a weight $\mathcal{W}$, and a Maxwell demon…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2017-11-17 M. Hamed Mohammady , Janet Anders

We describe a minimal model of an autonomous Maxwell demon, a device that delivers work by rectifying thermal fluctuations while simultaneously writing information to a memory register. We solve exactly for the steady-state behavior of our…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2012-08-10 Dibyendu Mandal , Christopher Jarzynski

Recently, in a letter to Nature, del Rio et al.8 exploited the quantum viewpoint of the old but well-known thought experiment of Maxwell's demon, a tiny "man-machine" that processes only a single unit of information. In their work, they…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2013-01-21 Alexandre de Castro

The ability to measure the stochastic degrees of freedom of a thermal system enables the extraction of energy from an equilibrium heat bath. This is the underlying principle of Maxwell's demon and subsequent information engines. Here, we…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-12-02 Rémi Goerlich , Gilad Pollack , Eli Flaxer , Saar Rahav , Yael Roichman

The paradox of Maxwell's demon motivated the development of information thermodynamics and the creation of nanoscale information engines. We now understand that machines such as the molecular motors within cells can in principle harvest…

We introduce a family of Generalized Continuous Maxwell Demons (GCMDs) operating on idealized single-bit equilibrium devices that combine the single-measurement Szilard and the repeated measurements of the Continuous Maxwell Demon…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-03-22 Juan P. Garrahan , Felix Ritort

We address the question of verifying the quantumness of thermal machines. A Szil\'ard engine is truly quantum if its work output cannot be described by a local hidden state (LHS) model, i. e. an objective local statistical ensemble.…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-12-25 Konstantin Beyer , Kimmo Luoma , Walter T. Strunz

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…

Maxwell's demon is a famous thought experiment and a paradigm of the thermodynamics of information. It is related to Szilard's engine, a two-state information-to-work conversion device in which the demon performs single measurements and…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-05-11 Paul Raux , Felix Ritort

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

Gathering information about a system enables greater control over it. This principle lies at the core of information engines, which use measurement-based feedback to rectify thermal noise and convert information into work. Originating from…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-01-24 Rémi Goerlich , Laura Hoek , Omer Chor , Saar Rahav , Yael Roichman

We discuss work extraction from classical information engines (e.g., Szil\'ard) with $N$-particles, $q$ partitions, and initial arbitrary non-equilibrium states. In particular, we focus on their {\em optimal} behaviour, which includes the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-09-10 Léo Touzo , Matteo Marsili , Neri Merhav , Édgar Roldán

The most succinct manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics is the limitation the Landauer principle imposes on the amount of heat a Maxwell demon (MD) can convert into free energy per single bit of information obtained in a…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2015-01-29 J. V. Koski , V. F. Maisi , J. P. Pekola , D. V. Averin

We analyze an engine whose working fluid consists of a single quantum particle, paralleling Szilard's construction of a classical single-particle engine. Following his resolution of Maxwell's Second Law paradox using the latter, which…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-12-07 Maryam Ashrafi , Kyle J. Ray , Fabio Anza , James P. Crutchfield

To induce transport, detailed balance must be broken. A common mechanism is to bias the dynamics with a thermodynamic fuel, such as chemical energy. An intriguing, alternative strategy is for a Maxwell demon to effect the bias using…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-11 Jordan M. Horowitz , Takahiro Sagawa , Juan M. R. Parrondo