Relation between non-Markovianity and Landauer's principle

Abstract

The dynamical role of system-environment correlations will lead to the violation of Landauer's principle and may result in a non-Markovian dynamics of the system. Here, we employ entropic quantities called the telescopic relative entropy, to detect non-Markovianity [N. Megier, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 030401 (2021)], and study the relation between information backflow of non-Markovian dynamics and the validity of Landauer's principle. We consider a class of energy-conserving system-environment interactions in qubit systems, and we prove that the violation of Landauer's principle corresponds to information backflow of a thermalizing process without coherence and vice versa. Then we study the effect of quantum coherence of the system on the relationship between non-Markovianity and Landauer's principle, and we find that coherence will break the corresponding relation in the information backflow and violation of Landauer's principle. Based on this, we explain the physical mechanism of non-Markovianity in this irreversible process of heat dissipation and information erasure. We further numerically confirm the above theoretical results by means of a collision model.