Experimental Verification of the Work Fluctuation-Dissipation Relation for Information-to-Work Conversion

Matteo Scandi,Martí Perarnau-Llobet,David Barker,Claes Thelander,Kimberly A. Dick,Sebastian Lehmann,Ville F. Maisi

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.128.040602

Matteo Scandi, Martí Perarnau-Llobet + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.128.040602

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Abstract

We study experimentally work fluctuations in a Szilard engine that extracts work from information encoded as the occupancy of an electron level in a semiconductor quantum dot. We show that as the average work extracted per bit of information increases toward the Landauer limit k_{B}Tln2, the work fluctuations decrease in accordance with the work fluctuation-dissipation relation. We compare the results to a protocol without measurement and feedback and show that when no information is used, the work output and fluctuations vanish simultaneously, contrasting the information-to-energy conversion case where increasing amount of work is produced with decreasing fluctuations. Our study highlights the importance of fluctuations in the design of information-to-work conversion processes.

Highlights

When considering thermodynamic processes at the microscale, where fluctuations play a dominant role, one faces the challenge of describing work and heat as stochastic quantities
We study experimentally work fluctuations in a Szilard engine that extracts work from information encoded as the occupancy of an electron level in a semiconductor quantum dot
We show that as the average work extracted per bit of information increases toward the Landauer limit kBT ln 2, the work fluctuations decrease in accordance with the work fluctuation-dissipation relation

Summary

Introduction

When considering thermodynamic processes at the microscale, where fluctuations play a dominant role, one faces the challenge of describing work and heat as stochastic quantities. Experimental Verification of the Work Fluctuation-Dissipation Relation for Information-to-Work Conversion We study experimentally work fluctuations in a Szilard engine that extracts work from information encoded as the occupancy of an electron level in a semiconductor quantum dot. We show that as the average work extracted per bit of information increases toward the Landauer limit kBT ln 2, the work fluctuations decrease in accordance with the work fluctuation-dissipation relation.

Results

Conclusion