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The physics of forgetting: Landauer's erasure principle and information theory

Martin Bodo Plenio, V. Vitelli

Published Jan 1, 2001• 152 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

This article discusses the concept of information and its intimate relationship with physics. After an introduction of all the necessary quantum mechanical and information theoretical concepts we analyze Landauer's principle that states that the erasure of information is inevitably accompanied by the generation of heat. We employ this principle to rederive a number of results in classical and quantum information theory whose rigorous mathematical derivations are difficult. This demonstrates the usefulness of Landauer's principle and provides an introduction to the physical theory of information.

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The physics of forgetting: Landauer's erasure principle and information theory

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Information processing systems must obey laws of physics. One of particular examples of this general statement is known as Landauer’s principle - irreversible operations (such as erasure) performed by any computing device at finite temperature have to dissipate some amount of heat bound from below. Together with other results of this kind, Landauer’s principle represents a fundamental limit any modern or future computer must obey.

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Vladimir I Shevchenko

Information processing systems must obey laws of physics. One of particular examples of this general statement is known as Landauer’s principle - irreversible operations (such as erasure) performed by any computing device at finite temperature have to dissipate some amount of heat bound from below. Together with other results of this kind, Landauer’s principle represents a fundamental limit any modern or future computer must obey.

EPJ Web of Conferences•Jan 1, 2015•0 citations
This article discusses the concept of information and its intimate relationship with physics. After an introduction of all the necessary quantum mechanical and information theoretical concepts we analyze Landauer's principle that states that the erasure of information is inevitably accompanied by the generation of heat. We employ this principle to rederive a number of results in classical and quantum information theory whose rigorous mathematical derivations are difficult. This demonstrates the usefulness of Landauer's principle and provides an introduction to the physical theory of information.
This article discusses the concept of information and its intimate relationship with physics. After an introduction of all the necessary quantum mechanical and information theoretical concepts we analyse Landauer's principle which states that the erasure of information is inevitably accompanied by the generation of heat. We employ this principle to rederive a number of results in classical and quantum information theory whose rigorous mathematical derivations are difficult. This demonstrates the usefulness of Landauer's principle and provides an introduction to the physical theory of information.
We show that information in quantum memory can be erased and recovered perfectly if it is necessary. The fact that the final states of environment are completely determined by the initial states of the system allows an erasure operation to be realized by a swap operation between the system and an ancilla. Therefore, the erased information can be recovered. When there is an irreversible process, e.g. an irreversible operation or a decoherence process, in the erasure process, the information would be erased perpetually. We present that quantum erasure will also give heat dissipation in the environment. A classical limit of quantum erasure is given to coincide with Landauer's erasure principle.