A Maxwell Demon Model Connecting Information and Thermodynamics**Supported by the National Basic Research Program of China under Grant No 2013CB921800, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 11227901, 91021005, 11104262, 31470835, 21233007, 21303175, 21322305, 11374305 and 11274299, and the Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant Nos XDB01030400 and 01020000.

Abstract

In the past decades several theoretical Maxwell's demon models have been proposed to exhibit effects such as refrigerating, doing work at the cost of information, and some experiments have been carried out to realize these effects. We propose a model with a two-level demon, information represented by a sequence of bits, and two heat reservoirs. The reservoir that the demon is interacting with depends on the bit. When the temperature difference between the two heat reservoirs is large enough, the information can be erased. On the other hand, when the information is pure enough, heat transfer from one reservoir to the other can happen, resulting in the effect of refrigeration. Genuine examples of such a system are discussed.