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Related papers: Is Szilard Engine Really Broken?

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Maxwell's Demon, 'a being whose faculties are so sharpened that he can follow every molecule in its course', has been the centre of much debate about its abilities to violate the second law of thermodynamics. Landauer's hypothesis, that the…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2015-11-06 Samson Abramsky , Dominic Horsman

In the past decade several theoretical Maxwell's demon models have been proposed exhibiting effects such as refrigerating, doing work at the cost of information, and some experiments have been done to realise these effects. Here we propose…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-08-24 Peiyan Peng , Changkui Duan

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

This is a review of the theory of quantum thermodynamic demons; these are quantum systems that look like they violate the laws of thermodynamics, in analogy with Maxwell's demon. It concentrates on autonomous demons that can be made using…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2023-04-07 Robert S. Whitney

The nanoscopic isothermal machines are not only energy but also information transducers. We show that the generalized fluctuation theorem with information creation and entropy reduction can be fulfilled for the enzymatic molecular machines…

Biological Physics · Physics 2017-02-06 Michal Kurzynski , Przemyslaw Chelminiak

The remarkable progress of artificial intelligence (AI) has revealed the enormous energy demands of modern digital architectures, raising deep concerns about sustainability. In stark contrast, the human brain operates efficiently on only…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-11-03 Toshio Yanagida , Keisuke Fujita , Mitsuhiro Iwaki

We introduce a deterministic chaotic system---the Szilard Map---that encapsulates the measurement, control, and erasure protocol by which Maxwellian Demons extract work from a heat reservoir. Implementing the Demon's control function in a…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-05-18 Alexander B. Boyd , James P. Crutchfield

We study the reduction in total entropy, and associated conversion of environmental heat into work, arising from the coupling and decoupling of two systems followed by processing determined by suitable mutual feedback. The scheme is based…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-05-10 Ian J. Ford , Michael Maitland

A demonic being, introduced by Maxwell, to miraculously create thermal non-equilibrium and violate the Second law of thermodynamics, has been among the most intriguing and elusive wishful concepts for over 150 years. Maxwell and his…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2020-04-02 Milivoje M. Kostic

We present a pedagogical review of the fundamental concepts in thermodynamics of information, by focusing on the second law of thermodynamics and the entropy production. Especially, we discuss the relationship among thermodynamic…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2017-12-20 Takahiro Sagawa

In this highly speculative Letter it is argued that, under certain physical conditions, Maxwell's demon might be capable of breaking the second law of thermodynamics, thereby allowing a perpetual motion machine of the second kind, by…

General Physics · Physics 2011-05-25 Karl Svozil

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that temporal evolution of an isolated system occurs with non-diminishing entropy. In quantum realm, this holds for energy-isolated systems the evolution of which is described by the so-called unital…

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

Second law of thermodynamics can be apparently violated for systems whose dynamics depends on acquired information by measurement. However, when one consider measurement and erasure process together along with the system it saves the second…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-11-08 Shubhashis Rana , A. M. Jayannavar

We implement a Szilard engine using a 2-bit logical unit consisting of inductively coupled quantum flux parametrons (QFPs) -- Josephson-junction superconducting circuits with applications in both the classical and quantum information…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-09-10 Kuen Wai Tang , Kyle J. Ray , James P. Crutchfield

The association of information with entropy has been argued on plausibility arguments involving the operation of imaginary engines and beings, and it is not a universal theorem. In this paper, a theorem by Charles Bennett on reversible…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-04-24 Penha Maria Cardozo Dias

Resolution of the century-long paradox on Maxwell's demon reveals a deep connection between information theory and thermodynamics. Although initially introduced as a thought experiment, Maxwell's demon can now be implemented in several…

In apparent contradiction to the laws of thermodynamics, Maxwell's demon is able to cyclically extract work from a system in contact with a thermal bath exploiting the information about its microstate. The resolution of this paradox…

In this paper two connected Szilard single molecule engines (with different temperature) model of Maxwell's demon are used to demonstrate and analysis the logical compare operation. The logical and physical complexity of compare operations…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2014-08-06 Feng Pan , Heng-Liang Zhang , Jie Qi

Signal transduction in living cells is vital to maintain life itself, where information transfer in noisy environment plays a significant role. In a rather different context, the recent intensive researches of "Maxwell's demon" - a feedback…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-30 Sosuke Ito , Takahiro Sagawa