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Maxwell's demon was born in 1867 and still thrives in modern physics. He plays important roles in clarifying the connections between two theories: thermodynamics and information. Here, we present the history of the demon and a variety of…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2009-01-13 Koji Maruyama , Franco Nori , Vlatko Vedral

Converting information into work has during the last decade gained renewed interest as it gives insight into the relation between information theory and thermodynamics. Here we theoretically investigate an implementation of Maxwell's demon…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2020-04-09 Björn Annby-Andersson , Peter Samuelsson , Ville F. Maisi , Patrick P. Potts

We have simulated numerically an automated version of Maxwell's demon inspired by Smoluchowski's ideas of 1912. Two gas chambers of equal volume are connected via an opening that is covered by a trapdoor. The trapdoor can open to the left…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 P. A. Skordos , W. H. Zurek

In the present paper, several issues concerning the second law of thermodynamics, Maxwell's demon and Landauer's principle are dealt with. I argue that if the demon and the system on which it operates without dissipation of external energy…

Classical Physics · Physics 2013-06-04 Germano D'Abramo

The second law of thermodynamics is probabilistic in nature. Its formulation requires that the state of a system be described by a probability distribution. A natural question, thereby, arises as to whether a prior knowledge about the state…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-04-11 P. S. Pal , A. M. Jayannavar

This paper discusses Maxwell's demon thought experiment. In recent years, there has been extensive research on Maxwell's demon. I first provide a detailed overview of important historical milestones of Maxwell's demon thought experiment.…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2022-09-21 Galina Weinstein

Emerging evidence suggests that physical systems operating as Maxwell demons, in which some subsystem of a larger system extracts heat energy from its environment in an apparent local violation of the second law, are commonplace throughout…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-03-04 Matthew P Leighton

Maxwell's demon is a famous thought experiment and a paradigm of the thermodynamics of information. It is related to Szilard's engine, a two-state information-to-work conversion device in which the demon performs single measurements and…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-05-11 Paul Raux , Felix Ritort

We present an autonomous Maxwell's demon scheme. It is first analysed theoretically in term of information exchange in a closed system and then implemented experimentally with a single Rydberg atom and a high-quality microwave resonator.…

In apparent contradiction to the laws of thermodynamics, Maxwell's demon is able to cyclically extract work from a system in contact with a thermal bath exploiting the information about its microstate. The resolution of this paradox…

Recent implementations of Maxwell demons and other devices exhibiting asymmetric response to particles incident from opposite directions have raised conceptual and practical interest. According to quantum-scattering-theory selection rules,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-03-10 Andreas Ruschhaupt , Juan Gonzalo Muga

I dispute the conventional claim that the second law of thermodynamics is saved from a "Maxwell's Demon" by the entropy cost of information erasure, and show that instead it is measurement that incurs the entropy cost. Thus Brillouin, who…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-07-22 R. E. Kastner

We study the physical mechanism of Maxwell's Demon (MD) helping to do extra work in thermodynamic cycles, by describing measurement of position, insertion of wall and information erasing of MD in a quantum mechanical fashion. The heat…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-05-19 H. Dong , D. Z. Xu , C. P. Sun

Maxwell's demon was created with abilities to violate the second law of thermodynamics. But the demon always fell short of doing so because of the imposed restrictive condition that reads, the demon needs to do "work". Therefore, you can…

General Physics · Physics 2012-07-13 Andrew Das Arulsamy

Maxwell's Demon is at the heart of the interrelation between quantum information processing and thermodynamics. In this thought experiment, a demon generates a temperature gradient between two thermal baths initially at equilibrium by…

We study the reduction in total entropy, and associated conversion of environmental heat into work, arising from the coupling and decoupling of two systems followed by processing determined by suitable mutual feedback. The scheme is based…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-05-10 Ian J. Ford , Michael Maitland

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

A pair of random walks $(R,S)$ on the vertices of a graph $G$ is {\it successful} if two tokens can be scheduled (moving only one token at a time) to travel along $R$ and $S$ without colliding. We consider questions related to P. Winkler's…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-06-30 Aaron Abrams , Henry Landau , Zeph Landau , James Pommersheim , Eric Zaslow

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 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