Maxwell's demon for quantum transport
Abstract
While most of the existing quantum information engines assisted by Maxwell's demon harness thermal fluctuations, those that rectify only quantum fluctuations have recently been constructed. We propose an alternative type of quantum information engine that harnesses only quantum fluctuations to achieve cumulative energy storage and unidirectional transport of a particle. This unidirectional transport makes a stark contrast with the case without Maxwell's demon where the motion of a particle is confined to a finite region due to Bloch oscillations. We find a trade-off relationship between the maximum power and the maximum velocity. With an improved definition of efficiency that includes all possible energy flows in the engine cycle, we numerically demonstrate the absence of a trade-off relationship among power, efficiency, and power fluctuations that is present for classical heat engines and classical information engines. We also evaluate the influence of experimentally unavoidable measurement imprecision on the performance of the quantum Maxwell's demon.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2303.08326,
title = {Maxwell's demon for quantum transport},
author = {Kangqiao Liu and Masaya Nakagawa and Masahito Ueda},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.08326},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
16 pages, 10 figures. New results: (1) the absence of a tradeoff among power, power fluctuation, and efficiency; (2) imprecise position measurement