Landauer Principle and Thermodynamics of Computation

Abstract

According to the Landauer principle, any logically irreversible process accompanies entropy production, which results in heat dissipation in the environment. Erasing of information, one of the primary logically irreversible processes, has a lower bound on heat dissipated into the environment, called the Landauer bound (LB). However, the practical erasure processes dissipate much more heat than the LB. Recently, there have been a few experimental investigations to reach this bound both in the classical and quantum domains. There has also been a spate of activities to enquire about this LB in finite time, with finite-size heat baths, non-Markovian and nonequilibrium environments in the quantum regime, where the effects of fluctuations and correlation of the systems with the bath can no longer be ignored. This article provides a comprehensive review of the recent progress on the Landauer bound, which serves as a fundamental principle in the thermodynamics of computation. We also provide a perspective for future endeavors in these directions. Furthermore, we review the recent explorations toward establishing energetic bounds of a computational process. We also discuss the thermodynamic aspects of error correction, which is an indispensable part of information processing and computations. In doing so, we briefly discuss the basics of these fields to provide a complete picture.