The fundamental difference between logical and thermodynamic irreversibilities, or, Why Landauer's result cannot be a physical principle

Didier Lairez

doi:10.3390/sym16121594

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arXiv · 2409.15085

The fundamental difference between logical and thermodynamic irreversibilities, or, Why Landauer's result cannot be a physical principle

Didier Lairez

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Abstract

Landauer's "principle" claims that erasing one bit of information necessarily dissipates at least Tln2 of heat into the surroundings, making a possibly logically irreversible operation also thermodynamically irreversible. It is commonly accepted that this result is a fundamental principle of physics that definitively establishes the link between information and energy. Here we show that this result cannot be general. In fact it comes: 1) from a confusion between logical and thermodynamic irreversibilities and between logical and thermodynamic states, which is reminiscent of the classic Gibbs' paradox about the joining of two volumes of the same gas; and 2) from two unnecessary constraints imposed on the erase procedure. Clarifying these points permits: to dissociate the notions of logical and thermodynamic irreversibilities; to invalidate Landauer's result as being a general physical principle; and to open the door to hardware implementations allowing erasure to follow a thermodynamically reversible, or at least quasistatic, path.

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Didier Lairez. 2024-09-23. The fundamental difference between logical and thermodynamic irreversibilities, or, Why Landauer's result cannot be a physical principle. https://doi.org/10.3390/sym16121594

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