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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

The pursuit of achieving the maximum power in microscopic thermal engines has gained increasing attention in recent studies of stochastic thermodynamics. We employ the optimal control theory to study the performance of Brownian heat engines…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-10-31 Jin-Fu Chen , H. T. Quan

The efficiency of a Brownian particle moving in periodic potential in the presence of asymmetric unbiased fluctuations is investigated. We found that there is a regime where the efficiency can be a peaked function of temperature, which…

Biological Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Bao-Quan Ai , Xian-Ju Wang , Guo-Tao Liu , De-Hua Wen , Hui-Zhang Xie , Wei Chen , Liang-Gang Liu

The conversion of thermal energy into work is usually more efficient in the slow-driving regime, where the power output is vanishingly small. Efficient work extraction for fast driving protocols remains an outstanding challenge at the…

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

Understanding noisy information engines is a fundamental problem of non-equilibrium physics, particularly in biomolecular systems agitated by thermal and active fluctuations in the cell. By the generalized second law of thermodynamics, the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-09-01 Govind Paneru , Sandipan Dutta , Takahiro Sagawa , Tsvi Tlusty , Hyuk Kyu Pak

A finite cycle time information engine based on a two-level system in contact with a thermal reservoir is studied analytically. The model for the engine incorporates an error in measuring the system's state and time delay between the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-05-13 Kiran V , Toby Joseph

Szil\'ard's information engine is a canonical example in the field of thermodynamics of information. We realize experimentally a macroscopic many-particle Szil\'ard engine that consists of active particles and use it to lift a mass against…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-08-22 Omer Chor , Amir Sohachi , Rémi Goerlich , Eran Rosen , Saar Rahav , Yael Roichman

We model a Brownian heat engine as a Brownian particle that hops in a periodic ratchet potential where the ratchet potential is coupled with a linearly decreasing background temperature. It is shown that the efficiency of such Brownian heat…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-06-29 Mesfin Asfaw Taye

The Szilard engine stands as a compelling illustration of the intricate interplay between information and thermodynamics. While at thermodynamic equilibrium, the apparent breach of the second law of thermodynamics was reconciled by Landauer…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-01-17 Luca Cocconi , Letian Chen

Understanding the connections between information and thermodynamics has been among the most visible applications of stochastic thermodynamics. While recent theoretical advances have established that the second law of thermodynamics sets…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-10-22 Joseph N. E. Lucero , Jannik Ehrich , John Bechhoefer , David A. Sivak

Heat engines transform thermal energy into useful work, operating in a cyclic manner. For centuries, they have played a key role in industrial and technological development. Historically, only gases and liquids have been used as working…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-03-25 Irene Prieto-Rodríguez , Antonio Prados , Carlos A. Plata

Optimization of cyclic stochastic heat engines, a topic spanning decades of research, commonly assumes fixed control or response parameters at discrete points in the cycle-a limitation that often leads to experimentally impractical…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-07-02 Monojit Chatterjee , Viktor Holubec , Rahul Marathe

Closed-loop or feedback controlled ratchets are Brownian motors that operate using information about the state of the system. For these ratchets, we compute the power output and we investigate its relation with the information used in the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-11-05 M. Feito , F. J. Cao

A general kind of Brownian vortexes are demonstrated by applying an external nonconservative force field to a colloidal particle bound by a conservative optical trapping force at a liquid-air interface. As the liquid medium is translated at…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2011-05-09 Manas Khan , A. K. Sood

Work can be extracted from a single heat bath if additional information is available. For the paradigmatic case of a Brownian particle in a harmonic potential, whose position has been measured with finite precision, we determine the optimal…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2011-03-24 D. Abreu , U. Seifert

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

Information engines can use structured environments as a resource to generate work by randomizing ordered inputs and leveraging the increased Shannon entropy to transfer energy from a thermal reservoir to a work reservoir. We give a broadly…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2017-02-01 Alexander B. Boyd , Dibyendu Mandal , James P. Crutchfield

A microscopic heat engine is modeled as a Brownian particle in a sawtooh potential (with load) moving through a highly viscous medium driven by the thermal kick it gets from alternately placed hot and cold heat reservoirs. We found closed…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 Mesfin Asfaw , Mulugeta Bekele

Measurement and feedback allows an external agent to extract work from a system in contact with a single thermal bath. The maximum amount of work that can be extracted in a single measurement and the corresponding feedback loop is given by…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-01-19 L. Dinis , J. M. R. Parrondo