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The energy cost of erasing a bit of information was fundamentally lower bounded by Landauer, in terms of the temperature of its environment: $W\geq k_\mathrm{B} T \ln 2$. However, in real electronic devices, the information-bearing system…

Information erasure inevitably leads to heat dissipation. Minimizing this dissipation will be crucial for developing small-scale information processing systems, but little is known about the optimal procedures required. We have obtained…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-17 Patrick R. Zulkowski , Michael R. DeWeese

Memories are stored, retained, and recollected through complex, coupled processes operating on multiple timescales. To understand the computational principles behind these intricate networks of interactions we construct a broad class of…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2015-07-29 Marcus K. Benna , Stefano Fusi

Quantum complexity measures the difficulty of realizing a quantum process, such as preparing a state or implementing a unitary. We present an approach to quantifying the thermodynamic resources required to implement a process if the…

The rapid scaling of artificial intelligence models has revealed a fundamental tension between model capacity (storage) and inference efficiency (computation). While classical information theory focuses on transmission and storage limits,…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2026-01-01 Jianfeng Xu , Zeyan Li

Thermodynamics and information have intricate inter-relations. The justification of the fact that information is physical, is done by inter-linking information and thermodynamics - through Landauer's principle. This modern approach towards…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-05-29 Manabendra Nath Bera , Andreas Winter , Maciej Lewenstein

We apply evolutionary reinforcement learning to a simulation model in order to identify efficient time-dependent erasure protocols for a physical realization of a one-bit memory by an underdamped mechanical cantilever. We show that these…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-05-13 Nicolas Barros , Stephen Whitelam , Sergio Ciliberto , Ludovic Bellon

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

This paper concludes a three-Part series on the limits the laws of physics place on the sustained performance of reversible computers. Part I concerned aggregate performance in terms of computational operations per unit time, but neglected…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-12-02 Hannah Earley

Thermodynamics with multiple-conserved quantities offers a promising direction for designing novel devices. For example, Vaccaro and Barnett's [J. A. Vaccaro and S. M. Barnett, Proc. R. Soc. A 467, 1770 (2011); S. M. Barnett and J. A.…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-11-23 Toshio Croucher , Joan A. Vaccaro

We study the time degradation of quantum information stored in a quantum memory device under a dissipative environment in a parameter range which is experimentally relevant. The quantum memory under consideration comprises of an…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-01-19 Tavshabad Kaur , Maninder Kaur , Arvind , Bindiya Arora

Landauer's erasure principle is generalized to nondeterministic processes on systems having an arbitrary number of non-symmetrical logical states. The condition that the process is applied in the same way, irrespective of the initial…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2009-04-03 S. Turgut

We show that for systems with broken time-reversal symmetry the maximum efficiency and the efficiency at maximum power are both determined by two parameters: a "figure of merit" and an asymmetry parameter. In contrast to the time-symmetric…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-03-19 Giuliano Benenti , Keiji Saito , Giulio Casati

Quantum information processing is limited, in practice, to efficiently implementable operations. This motivates the study of quantum divergences that preserve their operational meaning while faithfully capturing these computational…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-09-26 Álvaro Yángüez , Thomas A. Hahn , Jan Kochanowski

The erasure of a classical bit of information is a dissipative process. The minimum heat produced during this operation has been theorized by Rolf Landauer in 1961 to be equal to $k_B T \ln 2$ and takes the name of Landauer limit, Landauer…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2016-09-28 Igor Neri , Miquel López-Suárez

Information is central to thermodynamics, providing the grounds to the formulation of the theory in powerful abstract statistical terms. One must not forget, however, that, as put by Landauer, {\it information is physical}. This means that…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-05-01 T. Croucher , J. Wright , A. R. R. Carvalho , S. M. Barnett , J. A. Vaccaro

Landauer's principle states that erasing a bit of information at fixed temperature T costs at least kT ln 2 units of work. Here we investigate erasure at varying temperature, to which Landauer's result does not apply. We formulate bit…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-12-29 Stephen Whitelam

In this work we explore the use of thermodynamic length to improve the performance of experimental protocols. In particular, we implement Landauer erasure on a driven electron level in a semiconductor quantum dot, and compare the standard…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2023-02-03 Matteo Scandi , David Barker , Sebastian Lehmann , Kimberly A. Dick , Ville F. Maisi , Martí Perarnau-Llobet

A critical analysis of the feasibility of reversible computing is performed. The key question is: Is it possible to build a completely reversible computer? A closer look into the internal aspects of the reversible computing as well as the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2017-03-01 Martin Lukac , Gerhard W. Dueck , Michitaka Kameyama , Anirban Pathak

Recent investigations into the physical nature of information and fundamental limits to information transmission have revealed questions such as the possibility of superluminal data transfer or not; and whether reversible computation…

Classical Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Michael C. Parker , Stuart D. Walker