Related papers: Maxwell's Demon, Szilard's Engine and Quantum Meas…
Maxwell's demon explores the role of information in physical processes. Employing information about microscopic degrees of freedom, this "intelligent observer" is capable of compensating entropy production (or extracting work), apparently…
Time and energy of quantum processes are a tradeoff against each other. We propose to ascribe to any given quantum process a time-energy cost to quantify how much computation it performs. Here, we analyze the time-energy costs for general…
We discuss a self-contained spin-boson model for a measurement-driven engine, in which a demon generates work from thermal excitations of a quantum spin via measurement and feedback control. Instead of granting it full direct access to the…
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…
We develop a quantum algorithm for estimating the free energy as well as the total Gibbs state of interacting quantum Coulomb gases and molecular systems in dimensions $d \in \{2,3\}$ at finite temperature. These systems lie beyond the…
We propose and analyze Maxwell's demon based on a single qubit with avoided level crossing. Its operation cycle consists of adiabatic drive to the point of minimum energy separation, measurement of the qubit state, and conditional feedback.…
We propose and analyze a possible implementation of Maxwell's demon based on a single-electron pump. We show that measurements of the charge states of the pump and feedback control of the gate voltages lead to a net flow of electrons…
The quantum Szilard engine (QSZE) is a conceptual quantum engine for understanding the fundamental physics of quantum thermodynamics and information physics. We generalize the QSZE to an arbitrary spin case, i.e., a spin QSZE (SQSZE), and…
This article presents recent progress in the theory of quantum measurement engines and discusses the implications of them for quantum interpretations and philosophical implications of the theory. Several new measurement engine designs are…
In scenarios coined Maxwell's demon, information on microscopic degrees of freedom is used to seemingly violate the second law of thermodynamics. This has been studied in the classical as well as the quantum domain. In this paper, we study…
By developing and leveraging an explicit molecular realisation of a measurement-and-feedback-powered Szilard engine, we investigate the extraction of work from complex environments by minimal machines with finite capacity for memory and…
It was recently found that the information-to-work conversion in a quantum Szilard engine can be increased by using a working medium of bosons with attractive interactions. In the original scheme, the work output depends on the insertion…
We report two results complementing the second law of thermodynamics for Markovian open quantum systems coupled to multiple reservoirs with different temperatures and chemical potentials. First, we derive a nonequilibrium free energy…
In a recent paper [Vaikuntanathan and Jarzynski, Phys. Rev. E {\bf 83}, 061120 (2011), arXiv:1105.1744] a model was introduced whereby work could be extracted from a thermal bath by measuring the energy of a particle that was thermalized by…
A quantum measurement involves energy exchanges between the system to be measured and the measuring apparatus. Some of them involve energy losses, for example because energy is dissipated into the environment or is spent in recording the…
It has been more than 20 years since Deutsch and Hayden demonstrated that quantum systems can be completely described locally -- notwithstanding Bell's theorem. More recently, Raymond-Robichaud proposed two other approaches to the same…
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…
We have found the optimal condition of the work performed by the quantum Szilard engine (SZE) containing multi-particles. Usually the optimal work of a cyclic engine is achieved when the whole thermodynamic process is reversible. Although…
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…
Free energy calculations in molecular simulations have a variety of applications including determining the strength of molecular processes such as solvation and binding. It has been recently shown that when removing the VDW and Coulomb…