A quantum-mechanical Maxwell's demon
Preprint
- 12 December 1996
Abstract
A Maxwell's demon is a device that gets information and trades it in for thermodynamic advantage, in apparent (but not actual) contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics. Quantum-mechanical versions of Maxwell's demon exhibit features that classical versions do not: in particular, a device that gets information about a quantum system disturbs it in the process. In addition, the information produced by quantum measurement acts as an additional source of thermodynamic inefficiency. This paper investigates the properties of quantum-mechanical Maxwell's demons, and proposes experimentally realizable models of such devices.Keywords
All Related Versions
- Version 1, 1996-12-12, ArXiv
- Published version: Physical Review A, 56 (5), 3374.
This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: