Work and information processing in a solvable model of Maxwell’s demon

We describe a minimal model of an autonomous Maxwell demon, a device that delivers work by rectifying thermal fluctuations while simultaneously writing information to a memory register. We solve exactly for the steady-state behavior of our model, and we construct its phase diagram. We find that our device can also act as a “Landauer eraser”, using externally supplied work to remove information from the memory register. By exposing an explicit, transparent mechanism of operation, our model offers a simple paradigm for investigating the thermodynamics of information processing by small systems.

• Publication year

  2012

• Venue

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

• Publication date

  2012-06-25

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Physics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1073/pnas.1204263109arXiv 1206.5553PMID 22753515PMCID PMC3406850
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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