Abstract
This Colloquium is a fast journey through the build-up of key thermodynamical concepts, i.e. work, heat and irreversibility -- and how they relate to information. Born at the time of industrial revolution to optimize the exploitation of thermal resources, these concepts have been adapted to small systems where thermal fluctuations are predominant. Extending the framework to quantum fluctuations is a great challenge of quantum thermodynamics, that opens exciting research lines e.g. measurement fueled engines or thermodynamics of driven-dissipative systems. On a more applied side, it provides the tools to optimize the energetic consumption of future quantum computers.
Highlights
Work is extracted during the expansion of the gas while being coupled to the hot bath - increasing its entropy and lowering its free energy by an amount Th∆S. ∆S is fixed by the engine settings
If the compression is performed at the same temperature, no net work is extracted from the cycle, meaning that two baths at two different temperatures are required for work extraction
It provides a rigorous demonstration of the wellknown “irreversibility of quantum measurement" that fully exploits the relevant framework of stochastic thermodynamics
Summary
Latter Maxwell suggested that information could be used to sort out the molecules of the gas and lower its entropy, apparently at no work cost. Starting from an initial configuration where the particle has equal chances to be on the left or on the right, and compressing it, e.g. to the left of the chamber, is what is called a RESET operation in information theory: Whatever the initial state of the bit, it ends up in the state “0". This operation is logically irreversible: When it is performed, the initial state cannot be traced back. First experimental evidences of information to energy conversions (Szilard engines, Landauer’s erasure) have been obtained around 2010-2012 [6, 7]
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