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A quantum-mechanical Maxwell's demon

Seth Lloyd
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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.

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Seth Lloyd. 1996-12-12. A quantum-mechanical Maxwell's demon. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.56.3374

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