Related papers: Is Szilard Engine Really Broken?
The classical Second Law of Thermodynamics demands that an isolated system evolves with a non-diminishing entropy. This holds as well in quantum mechanics if the evolution of the energy-isolated system can be described by a unital quantum…
We have simulated numerically an automated version of Maxwell's demon inspired by Smoluchowski's ideas of 1912. Two gas chambers of equal volume are connected via an opening that is covered by a trapdoor. The trapdoor can open to the left…
We propose a physically realizable Maxwell's demon device using a spin valve interacting unitarily for a short time with electrons placed on a tape of quantum dots, which is thermodynamically equivalent to the device introduced by Mandal…
In a previous paper [1] we considered the question, "What underlying property of nature is responsible for the second law?" A simple answer can be stated in terms of information: The fundamental loss of information gives rise to the second…
Information-driven engines that rectify thermal fluctuations are a modern realization of the Maxwell-demon thought experiment. We introduce a simple design based on a heavy colloidal particle, held by an optical trap and immersed in water.…
It is generally accepted, following Landauer and Bennett, that the process of measurement involves no minimum entropy cost, but the erasure of information in resetting the memory register of a computer to zero requires dissipating heat into…
Maxwell's demon (MD) has proven an instructive vehicle by which to explore the relationship between information theory and thermodynamics, fueling the possibility of information driven machines. A long standing debate has been the concern…
The role of the third law of thermodynamics in the Szilard engine has been addressed. If the ground state is non-degenerate, the entropy production defined as the work extractable from the engine divided by temperature vanishes as…
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…
The limits of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which reigns undisputed in the macroscopic world, are investigated at the mesoscopic level, corresponding to spatial dimensions of a few microns. An extremely simple isolated system, modeled…
A tantalizing version of Maxwell's demon is presented which appears to operate reversibly. A container of hard core disks is separated into two chambers of equal volume by a membrane that selects which disk can penetrate depending on the…
Landauer argued that the process of erasing the information stored in a memory device incurs an energy cost in the form of a minimum amount of mechanical work. We find, however, that this energy cost can be reduced to zero by paying a cost…
We present a physical implementation of a Maxwell demon which consists of a conventional single electron transistor (SET) capacitively coupled to another quantum dot detecting its state. Altogether, the system is described by stochastic…
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…
So far, feedback-driven systems have been discussed using (i) measurement and control, (ii) a tape interacting with a system or (iii) by identifying an implicit Maxwell demon in steady state transport. We derive the corresponding second…
We introduce a class of quantum heat engines which consists of two-energy-eigenstate systems, the simplest of quantum mechanical systems, undergoing quantum adiabatic processes and energy exchanges with heat baths, respectively, at…
We look at certain thought experiments based upon the 'delayed choice' and 'quantum eraser' interference experiments, which present a complementarity between information gathered from a quantum measurement and interference effects. It has…
Starting from 2002, at least two kinds of laboratory-testable, solid-state Maxwell demons have been proposed that utilize the electric field energy of an open-gap n-p junction and that seem to challenge the validity of the Second Law of…
Maxwell's demon elucidates the value of information in thermodynamics, using measurement and feedback: he evolves an equilibrated gas into a nonequilibrium state, from which one might extract work. The demon can evolve the system farther…
There is a deep connection between thermodynamics, information and work extraction. Ever since the birth of thermodynamics, various types of Maxwell demons have been introduced in order to deepen our understanding of the second law. Thanks…