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A Szilard Engine is a hypothetical device which is able to extract work from a single thermal reservoir by measuring the position of particles within the engine. We derive the amount of work that can be extracted from such a device in the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-05-23 Martin Plesch , Oscar Dahlsten , John Goold , Vlatko Vedral

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

In Szilard's engine, a demon measures a one-particle gas and applies feedback to extract work from thermal fluctuations, embodying Maxwell's notion that information reduces thermodynamic entropy - an apparent second-law violation. The…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-08-26 Xiangjun Xing

The relation between entropy and information dates back to the classical Maxwell demon (MD) paradox, a thought experiment proposed in 1867 by J. C. Maxwell to violate the second law of thermodynamics. A variant of the classical MD is the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-06-03 Marco Ribezzi-Crivellari , Felix Ritort

We propose a new way of looking at the quantum Maxwell's demon problem in terms of conditional action. A "conditional action" on a system is a unitary time evolution, selected according to the result of a previous measurement, which can…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-10-28 Heinz-Jürgen Schmidt

In mathematical physical analyses of Szilard's engine and Maxwell's demon, a general assumption (explicit or implicit) is that one can neglect the energy needed for relocating the piston in Szilard's engine and for driving the trap door in…

General Physics · Physics 2012-06-26 Laszlo B. Kish , Claes G. Granqvist

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

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.…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-05-21 Tushar K. Saha , Joseph N. E. Lucero , Jannik Ehrich , David A. Sivak , John Bechhoefer

The long-standing paradigm of Maxwell's demon is till nowadays a frequently investigated issue, which still provides interesting insights into basic physical questions. Considering a single-electron transistor, where we implement a Maxwell…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-02-08 G. Engelhardt , G. Schaller

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

A Maxwell's demon type ``information engine" which extracts work from a bath is constructed from a microscopic Hamiltonian for the whole system including a subsystem, a thermal bath, and a nonequilibrium bath of phonons or photons which…

Condensed Matter · Physics 2009-10-22 Mark M. Millonas

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

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

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…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-08-14 Francesco Caravelli

Various biological and synthetic media out of equilibrium can be viewed as many-ratchet systems that rectify environmental noise through local measurements and information processing, like in Maxwell's prototypical demon. These systems pose…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-04-16 Bryan VanSaders , Michel Fruchart , Vincenzo Vitelli

The Szil\'ard engine is a mechanism (akin to Maxwell's demon) for converting information into energy, which seemingly violates the second law of thermodynamics. Originally a classical thought experiment, it was extended to a quantized…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-08-29 Paul Davies , Logan Thomas , George Zahariade

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

We analyze quantitatively the generation of a continuous beam of atoms by the periodic injection of individual packets in a guide, followed by their overlapping. We show that slowing the packets using a moving mirror before their…

Other Condensed Matter · Physics 2008-09-15 Gaël Reinaudi , David Guery-Odelin

We discuss work extraction from classical information engines (e.g., Szil\'ard) with $N$-particles, $q$ partitions, and initial arbitrary non-equilibrium states. In particular, we focus on their {\em optimal} behaviour, which includes the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-09-10 Léo Touzo , Matteo Marsili , Neri Merhav , Édgar Roldán

A 1929 Gedankenexperiment proposed by Szil\'ard, often referred to as "Szil\'ard's engine", has served as a foundation for computing fundamental thermodynamic bounds to information processing. While Szil\'ard's original box could be…