Autonomous conversion of information to work in quantum dots

Abstract

We consider an autonomous implementation of Maxwell's demon in a quantum dot architecture. As in the original thought experiment, only the second law of thermodynamics is seemingly violated when disregarding the demon. The autonomous architecture allows us to compare descriptions in terms of information to a more traditional, thermoelectric characterization. Our detailed investigation of information-to-work conversion is based on fluctuation relations and second law like inequalities in addition to the average heat and charge currents. By introducing a time-reversal on the level of individual electrons, we find a novel fluctuation relation that is not connected to any symmetry of the moment generating function of heat and particle flows. Furthermore, we show how an effective Markovian master equation with broken detailed balance for the system alone can emerge from a full description, allowing for an investigation of the entropic cost associated to breaking detailed balance. Interestingly, while the entropic cost of performing a perfect measurement diverges, the entropic cost of breaking detailed balance does not. Our results connect various approaches and idealized scenarios found in the literature and can be tested experimentally with present day technology. arXiv:1907.02866v1 [cond-mat.mes-hall]

Quantifying nonequilibrium thermodynamic operations in a multiterminal mesoscopic system

“…[2,68,69]. Here, this has the advantage that any hidden presence of autonomous feedback [56,[70][71][72][73][74] can be excluded as the origin of the discussed demonic effect. In this regime, transport in the conductor can be described by a scattering matrix formalism for noninteracting electrons [41].…”

“…This is a general statement and should apply in many systems, including optics [26]. In cases where energy transfer is done via Coulomb interaction [25,55] rather than particle exchange, the system can be understood as a type of autonomous Maxwell demon [56].…”

Thermodynamics of Quantum Causal Models: An Inclusive, Hamiltonian Approach

“…To the best of the authors' knowledge, this distinguishes the operational approach from other proposals in quantum stochastic thermodynamics. The idea to model everything autonomously is not novel and has been used very successfully to understand the physics of Maxwell's demon [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] or the thermodynamics of various forms of information processing [28][29][30]. Of particular inspiration in our context is the approach by Deffner and Jarzynski [29], hence it is also worthwhile to distinguish our approach from it.…”

Maxwell's demon in a double quantum dot with continuous charge detection

“…Another class of implementations are autonomous Maxwell demons, which do not rely on an external measurement and feedback loop. Several theoretical [42][43][44][45][46] as well as experimental [27] studies making use of autonomous charge sensing have been presented.…”