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Related papers: Information engine fueled by first-passage times

200 papers

We establish the fluctuation theorem in the presence of information exchange between a nonequilibrium system and other degrees of freedom such as an observer and a feedback controller, where the amount of information exchange is added to…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-05 Takahiro Sagawa , 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

We review recent studies of a colloidal information engine that consists of a bead in water and held by an optical trap. The bead is ratcheted upward without any apparent external work, by taking advantage of favorable thermal fluctuations.…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-12-30 Johan du Buisson , David A. Sivak , John Bechhoefer

This Colloquium is a fast journey through the build-up of key thermodynamical concepts, i.e. work, heat and irreversibility -- and how they relate to information. Born at the time of industrial revolution to optimize the exploitation of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-03-24 Alexia Auffèves

Information can improve heat engine performance, but the underlying principles are still not so clear. Here we introduce a Carnot information machine (CIE) and obtain a quantitative relationship between the engine performance and…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-07-21 Yang Xiao , Qian Zeng , Jin Wang

A theory of feedback controlled heat transport in quantum systems is presented. It is based on modelling heat engines as driven multipartite systems subject to projective quantum measurements and measurement-conditioned unitary evolutions.…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2017-05-29 Michele Campisi , Jukka Pekola , Rosario Fazio

We study the optimal performance of an information engine consisting of an overdamped Brownian bead confined in a controllable, $d$-dimensional harmonic trap and additionally subjected to gravity. The trap's center is updated dynamically…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-02-18 Antonio Patrón Castro , John Bechhoefer , David A. Sivak

A fluctuation theorem is examined for the first-passage time of a biomolecular machine (e.g., a motor protein or an enzyme) in a nonequilibrium steady-state. For such machines in which the driven, observable process is coupled to a hidden…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-09-15 D. Evan Piephoff , Jianshu Cao

Isothermal information engines operate by extracting net work from a single heat bath through measurement and feedback control. In this work, we analyze a realistic active Szilard engine operating on a single active particle by means of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-05-15 Luca Cocconi , Paolo Malgaretti , Holger Stark

We describe an experiment on an underdamped mechanical oscillator used as an information engine. The system is equivalent to an inertial Brownian particle confined in a harmonic potential whose center is controlled by a feedback protocol…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-01-23 Aubin Archambault , Caroline Crauste-Thibierge , Sergio Ciliberto , Ludovic Bellon

Heat engines and information engines have each historically served as motivating examples for the development of thermodynamics. While these two types of systems are typically thought of as two separate kinds of machines, recent empirical…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-12-30 Matthew P. Leighton , Jannik Ehrich , David A. Sivak

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

The common saying, that information is power, takes a rigorous form in stochastic thermodynamics, where a quantitative equivalence between the two helps explain the paradox of Maxwell's demon in its ability to reduce entropy. In the present…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-03-09 Amirhossein Taghvaei , Olga Movilla Miangolarra , Rui Fu , Yongxin Chen , Tryphon T. Georgiou

We investigate a measurement-feedback process of repeated operations with time delay. During a finite-time interval, measurement on the system is performed and the feedback protocol derived from the measurement outcome is applied with time…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-01-08 Chulan Kwon , Jaegon Um , Hyunggyu Park

The gedanken experiment of Maxwell's demon has led to the studies concerning the foundations of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. The demon measures fluctuations of a system's observable and converts the information gain into work…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-05-09 Y. Masuyama , K. Funo , Y. Murashita , A. Noguchi , S. Kono , Y. Tabuchi , R. Yamazaki , M. Ueda , Y. Nakamura

In a stochastic heat engine driven by a cyclic non-equilibrium protocol, fluctuations in work and heat give rise to a fluctuating efficiency. Using computer simulations and tools from large deviation theory, we have examined these…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2014-10-27 Todd R. Gingrich , Grant M. Rotskoff , Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan , Phillip L. Geissler

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…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2014-03-05 A. C. Barato , U. Seifert

While externally driven information engines are well understood, the thermodynamic constraints of their autonomous counterparts remain an open question. Here, we investigate the finite-time operation of an autonomous machine functioning as…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-20 Wanyan Chen , Miao Chen , Yu-Han Ma

We investigate fundamental limits on the performance of information processing systems from the perspective of information thermodynamics. We first extend the thermodynamic uncertainty relation (TUR) to a subsystem. Specifically, for a…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-01-04 Tomohiro Tanogami , Tan Van Vu , Keiji Saito

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