Approaching Landauer's Bound In A Spin-Encoded Quantum Computer

It is commonly recognized that the Landauer bound holds in (irreversible) quantum operations. In this study, we verified this bound by extracting a single spin from a spin-spin magnetic interaction experiment to demonstrate that the Landauer bound can be approached quantitatively with an approaching rate of 79.3 percent via quantum spin tunneling. An optically manipulated spin-encoded quantum computer is designed, in which energy bound near kB T to erase a spin qubit is theoretically sensible and experimentally verified. This work may represent the last piece of the puzzle in quantum Landauer erasure in terms of a single spin being the smallest information carrier.