Maxwell's daemon: Information versus particle statistics

Martin Plesch; Oscar Dahlsten; John Goold; Vlatko Vedral

doi:10.1038/srep06995

Maxwell's daemon: Information versus particle statistics

Martin Plesch^*
, Oscar Dahlsten
, John Goold
, Vlatko Vedral

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and Reviews › RGC 21 - Publication in refereed journal › peer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

19 Downloads (CityUHK Scholars)

Abstract

Maxwell's daemon is a popular personification of a principle connecting information gain and extractable work in thermodynamics. A Szilard Engine is a particular hypothetical realization of Maxwell's daemon, which is able to extract work from a single thermal reservoir by measuring the position of particle(s) within the system. Here we investigate the role of particle statistics in the whole process; namely, how the extractable work changes if instead of classical particles fermions or bosons are used as the working medium. We give a unifying argument for the optimal work in the different cases: the extractable work is determined solely by the information gain of the initial measurement, as measured by the mutual information, regardless of the number and type of particles which constitute the working substance.

Original language	English
Article number	6995
Journal	Scientific Reports
Volume	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/srep06995
Publication status	Published - 11 Nov 2014
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Publication details (e.g. title, author(s), publication statuses and dates) are captured on an “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” basis at the time of record harvesting from the data source. Suggestions for further amendments or supplementary information can be sent to [email protected].

Funding

O.D., J.H. and V.V. acknowledge support from the National Research Foundation (Singapore), the Ministry of Education (Singapore) and the EU Collaborative Project TherMiQ (Grant Agreement 618074). M.P. acknowledges the support of the EU FP7 grant agreement n°323970 (RAQUEL), GAČR P202/12/1142 and VEGA 2/0072/12.

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This full text is made available under CC-BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Maxwell's daemon: Information versus particle statistics

Abstract

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