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Related papers: Szilard engines and information-based work extract…

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Thermodynamics establishes that information acquired through measurement can be converted into work, as exemplified by Maxwell's demon and Szilard engines. Most experimental realizations of information engines, however, implicitly assume…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-09 Lokesh Muruga , Felix Ginot , Sarah A. M. Loos , Clemens Bechinger

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

We present a complete-quantum description of multi-particle Szilard engine which consists of a working substance and a Maxwell's demon. The demon is modeled as a multi-level quantum system with specific quantum control and the working…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2012-03-20 C. Y. Cai , H. Dong , C. P. Sun

The Szilard engine is the simplest possible engine, composed only of one or more particles in a box. The box is then immersed in a heat bath and partitioned into two parts by a wall. It is known that in the cold temperature limit, one may…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2013-08-08 T. K. Chuan , D. Kaszlikowski

In the Second Law of Thermodynamics which is a macroscopic physical law that states that in any isolated system, entropy can only increase and order, or organization, can only decrease. This means that in the long run, energy will always…

Classical Physics · Physics 2021-11-25 Srinivasa Rao. P

It was recently found that the information-to-work conversion in a quantum Szilard engine can be increased by using a working medium of bosons with attractive interactions. In the original scheme, the work output depends on the insertion…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-07-04 J. Bengtsson , M. Nilsson Tengstrand , S. M. Reimann

Because of its nonequilibrium character, active matter in a steady state can drive engines that autonomously deliver work against a constant mechanical force or torque. As a generic model for such an engine, we consider systems that contain…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-11-15 Patrick Pietzonka , Étienne Fodor , Christoph Lohrmann , Michael E. Cates , Udo Seifert

The key question of this paper is whether work can be extracted from a heat engine by using purely quantum mechanical information. If the answer is yes, what is its mathematical formula? First, by using a bipartite memory we show that the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-06-15 Jung Jun Park , Kang-Hwan Kim , Takahiro Sagawa , Sang Wook Kim

The so-called information-thermodynamics link has been created in a series of works starting from Maxwell demon and established by the idea of transforming information into work in the though experiment of Szilard which then evolved into…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-01-23 Robert Alicki

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

Here, we show the implementation of a complete cycle of a quantum engine fuelled by information. This engine is a quantum version of the Szilard engine, where information is used to extract heat from the environment and fully convert it…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-06-19 John P. S. Peterson , Roberto S. Sarthour , Raymond Laflamme

Szilard's now-famous single-molecule engine was only the first of three constructions he introduced in 1929 to resolve several paradoxes arising from Maxwell's demon. We analyze Szilard's remaining two demon models. We show that the second…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-03-24 Kyle J. Ray , James P. Crutchfield

Szilard's one-molecule engine is operated by a Maxwell's demon attempting to convert heat to work. It is argued here that when using the demon to relate information to work (Landauer's principle), the demon's goal must be regarded as an…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2015-04-29 J. H. van Hateren

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

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

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

From synthetic active devices such as self-propelling Janus colloids to micro-organisms like bacteria, micro-algae, living cells in tissues, active fluctuations are ubiquitous. Thermodynamics of small systems involving thermal as well as…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-01-29 Arnab Saha , Rahul Marathe

A Brownian information engine is a device extracting a mechanical work from a single heat bath by exploiting the information on the state of a Brownian particle immersed in the bath. As for engines, it is important to find the optimal…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-04-06 J. -M. Park , J. S. Lee , J. D. Noh

In Szilard's engine, measurement and feedback allows to extract work from an equilibrium environment, a process otherwise forbidden by the laws of thermodynamics. Recent theoretical developments have established fluctuation theorems and…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2025-11-14 David Barker , Sebastian Lehmann , Kimberly A. Dick , Peter Samuelsson , Ville Maisi , Patrick P. Potts

We present a computational model for Szilard's engine and the information discarding process. Taking advantage of a fact that the one is essentially the reversed cycle of the other, we can discuss the both by employing the same model.…

Classical Physics · Physics 2009-10-31 Takahiro Hatano , Shin-ichi Sasa