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Viewpoint: Maxwell’s demon in the quantum world

Juan M. R. Parrondo, Jordan M. Horowitz

Published Feb 14, 2011• 2 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Extraction of work from a heat bath using the Szilard engine depends crucially on the statistics of indistinguishable particles.

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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.
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.