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arXiv · 1006.1471

Quantum Szilard Engine

Sang Wook Kim·Takahiro Sagawa·Simone De Liberato·Masahito Ueda
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Abstract

The Szilard engine (SZE) is the quintessence of Maxwell's demon, which can extract the work from a heat bath by utilizing information. We present the first complete quantum analysis of the SZE, and derive an analytic expression of the quantum-mechanical work performed by a quantum SZE containing an arbitrary number of molecules, where it is crucial to regard the process of insertion or removal of a wall as a legitimate thermodynamic process. We find that more (less) work can be extracted from the bosonic (fermionic) SZE due to the indistinguishability of identical particles.

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Sang Wook Kim, Takahiro Sagawa, Simone De Liberato, Masahito Ueda. 2011-01-08. Quantum Szilard Engine. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.106.070401

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