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A Maxwell's demon is a device that gets information and trades it in for thermodynamic advantage, in apparent (but not actual) contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics. Quantum-mechanical versions of Maxwell's demon exhibit…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-10-30 Seth Lloyd

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…

This work provides an overview of key historical developments in the formulation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, focusing on the notorious challenge of ``Maxwell's Demon'', a hypothetical creature who could presumably violate that law.…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-19 R. E. Kastner

Maxwellian ratchets are autonomous, finite-state thermodynamic engines that implement input-output informational transformations. Previous studies of these "demons" focused on how they exploit environmental resources to generate work: They…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-09-02 Alexandra M. Jurgens , James P. Crutchfield

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

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

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

We analyze a quantum Maxwell demon operating a Szilard engine in free fall near a black hole horizon, where quantum information, thermodynamics, and spacetime causality intersect. The demon is modeled as a coherent two-level system, and the…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2026-05-12 Hamed Hadi , Amin Rezaei Akbarieh , Goksel Daylan Esmer

It is nearly 150 years since Maxwell challenged the validity of the second law of thermodynamics by imagining a tiny creature who could sort the molecules of a gas in such a way that would decrease entropy without exerting any work. The…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-08-24 Ian J. Ford

In his famous letter in 1870, Maxwell describes how Joule's law can be violated "only by the intelligent action of a mere guiding agent", later coined as Maxwell's demon by Lord Kelvin. In this letter we study thermodynamics of information…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-12-29 Aki Kutvonen , Jonne Koski , Tapio Ala-Nissilä

Autonomous Maxwell demon is a new type of information engine proposed by Mandal and Jarzynski, which can produce work by exploiting an information tape. Here, we show that a stochastic resetting mechanism can be used to improve the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-09-27 Ruicheng Bao , Zhiyu Cao , Jiming Zheng , Zhonghuai Hou

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 probabilistic information flow and natural computational capability of a system with two magnetic skyrmions at room temperature have been experimentally evaluated. Based on this evaluation, an all-solid-state built-in Maxwell's demon…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2025-06-17 Yoshishige Suzuki , Hiroki Mori , Soma Miki , Kota Emoto , Ryo Ishikawa , Eiiti Tamura , Hikaru Nomura , Minori Goto

Following recent work by Marathe and Parrondo [PRL, 104, 245704 (2010)], we construct a classical Hamiltonian system whose energy is reduced during the adiabatic cycling of external parameters, when initial conditions are sampled…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-05-28 Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan , Christopher Jarzynski

We propose a new thermodynamic equality and several inequalities concerning the relationship between work and information for an isothermal process with Maxwell's demon. Our approach is based on the formulation a la Jarzynski of the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 Takahiro Sagawa , Masahito Ueda

We propose a new inequality that we call the conditional ageing inequality (CAIN). The CAIN is a slight generalization to non-equilibrium situations of the Second Law of thermodynamics. The goal of this paper is to study the consequences of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2013-01-08 Robert R. Tucci

We introduce a family of Maxwellian Demons for which correlations among information bearing degrees of freedom can be calculated exactly and in compact analytical form. This allows one to precisely determine Demon functional thermodynamic…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-03-23 A. B. Boyd , D. Mandal , J. P. Crutchfield

Leo Szilard pointed out that Maxwell's demon can be replaced by machinery, thereby laying the foundation for understanding the physical nature of information. Szilard's information engine still serves as a canonical example after almost a…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-08-31 Susanne Still , Dorian Daimer

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

In 1929, Leo Szilard invented a feedback protocol in which a hypothetical intelligence called Maxwell's demon pumps heat from an isothermal environment and transduces it to work. After an intense controversy that lasted over eighty years;…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2012-02-21 Shoichi Toyabe , Takahiro Sagawa , Masahito Ueda , Eiro Muneyuki , Masaki Sano