Work extraction, information-content and the Landauer bound in the continuous Maxwell Demon

Abstract

In a recent paper we introduced a continuous version of the Maxwell demon (CMD) that is capable of extracting large amounts of work per cycle by repeated measurements of the state of the system Ribezzi-Crivellari and Ritort (2019 Nat. Phys.). Here we underline its main features such as the role played by the Landauer limit in the average extracted work, the continuous character of the measurement process and the differences between our continuous Maxwell demon and an autonomous Maxwell demon. We demonstrate the reversal of Landauer’s inequality depending on the thermodynamical and mechanical stability of the work extracting substance. We also emphasize the robustness of the Shannon definition of the information-content of the stored sequences in the limit where work extraction is maximal and fueled by the large information-content of rare events.