Quantum and Information Thermodynamics: A Unifying Framework Based on Repeated Interactions

in Physical Review X (2017), 7(021003),

We expand the standard thermodynamic framework of a system coupled to a thermal reservoir by <br />considering a stream of independently prepared units repeatedly put into contact with the system. These ... [more ▼]

We expand the standard thermodynamic framework of a system coupled to a thermal reservoir by <br />considering a stream of independently prepared units repeatedly put into contact with the system. These <br />units can be in any nonequilibrium state and interact with the system with an arbitrary strength and <br />duration. We show that this stream constitutes an effective resource of nonequilibrium free energy, and we <br />identify the conditions under which it behaves as a heat, work, or information reservoir. We also show that <br />this setup provides a natural framework to analyze information erasure (“Landauer’s principle”) and <br />feedback-controlled systems (“Maxwell’s demon”). In the limit of a short system-unit interaction time, we <br />further demonstrate that this setup can be used to provide a thermodynamically sound interpretation to <br />many effective master equations. We discuss how nonautonomously driven systems, micromasers, lasing <br />without inversion and the electronic Maxwell demon can be thermodynamically analyzed within our <br />framework. While the present framework accounts for quantum features (e.g., squeezing, entanglement, <br />coherence), we also show that quantum resources do not offer any advantage compared to classical ones in <br />terms of the maximum extractable work. [less ▲]

Thermodynamics of a Physical Model Implementing a Maxwell Demon

in Physical Review Letters (2013), 110(4)(040601(5)), 040601-1

We present a physical implementation of a Maxwell demon which consists of a conventional single electron transistor (SET) capacitively coupled to another quantum dot detecting its state. Altogether, the ... [more ▼]

We present a physical implementation of a Maxwell demon which consists of a conventional single electron transistor (SET) capacitively coupled to another quantum dot detecting its state. Altogether, the system is described by stochastic thermodynamics. We identify the regime where the energetics of the SET is not affected by the detection, but where its coarse-grained entropy production is shown to contain a new contribution compared to the isolated SET. This additional contribution can be identified as the information flow generated by the ‘‘Maxwell demon’’ feedback in an idealized limit. [less ▲]