In this work, we're looking at a simplified Hamiltonian model for information erasure in Quantum Internet of Things (QIoT) systems - basically just two qubits that interact with each other. We've set up a toy model where we continuously measure one qubit and use that info to control the other one. This basically lets us engineer the reservoir entropy before the environment starts messing things up. The feedback we engineer through the reservoir connects directly to how much energy it costs to erase information, and this lets us control how much mutual information the qubits share. We discuss both so-called ‘conditional’ (i.e., stochastic) and ‘unconditional’ (ensemble-averaged) master equations to describe the dynamics of the system under measurement-and-feedback protocol. This mutual information is quantified and embedded into a correlation-corrected Landauer bound, showing that quantum correlations can help us erase information using less work than the usual Landauer limit. A simple stability analysis shows the existence of an optimal feedback gain that maximizes the entropy transfer while maintaining system stability. So, our simple model here connects the quantum-level processes with the bigger thermodynamic picture - things like heat flow, entropy, and free energy when the system's out of equilibrium. We link explicitly feedback strength, dissipation rates, and correlation dynamics to provides a toy but physically intuitive model for the control in QIoT. Our model is based on the recent advances in quantum thermodynamics, reservoir engineering, and feedback-controlled quantum systems. This gives us a new way to think about building energy-efficient QIoT systems and opens some interesting possibilities for scaling more nodes, dealing with memory effects in the environment, and optimizing control across entire networks.
In this work, we're looking at a simplified Hamiltonian model for information erasure in Quantum Internet of Things (QIoT) systems - basically just two qubits that interact with each other. We've set up a toy model where we continuously measure one qubit and use that info to control the other one. This basically lets us engineer the reservoir entropy before the environment starts messing things up. The feedback we engineer through the reservoir connects directly to how much energy it costs to erase information, and this lets us control how much mutual information the qubits share. We discuss both so-called ‘conditional’ (i.e., stochastic) and ‘unconditional’ (ensemble-averaged) master equations to describe the dynamics of the system under measurement-and-feedback protocol. This mutual information is quantified and embedded into a correlation-corrected Landauer bound, showing that quantum correlations can help us erase information using less work than the usual Landauer limit. A simple stability analysis shows the existence of an optimal feedback gain that maximizes the entropy transfer while maintaining system stability. So, our simple model here connects the quantum-level processes with the bigger thermodynamic picture - things like heat flow, entropy, and free energy when the system's out of equilibrium. We link explicitly feedback strength, dissipation rates, and correlation dynamics to provides a toy but physically intuitive model for the control in QIoT. Our model is based on the recent advances in quantum thermodynamics, reservoir engineering, and feedback-controlled quantum systems. This gives us a new way to think about building energy-efficient QIoT systems and opens some interesting possibilities for scaling more nodes, dealing with memory effects in the environment, and optimizing control across entire networks.
Quantum state engineering and quantum computation rely on information erasure procedures that, up to some fidelity, prepare a quantum object in a pure state. Such processes occur within Landauer's framework if they rely on an interaction between the object and a thermal reservoir. Landauer's principle dictates that this must dissipate a minimum quantity of heat, proportional to the entropy reduction that is incurred by the object, to the thermal reservoir. However, this lower bound is only reachable for some specific physical situations, and it is not necessarily achievable for any given reservoir. The main task of our work can be stated as the minimisation of heat dissipation given probabilistic information erasure, i.e., minimising the amount of energy transferred to the thermal reservoir as heat if we require that the probability of preparing the object in a specific pure state | φ 1 ⟩ be no smaller than p φ 1 max − δ . Here p φ 1 max is the maximum probability of information erasure that is permissible by the physical context, and δ ⩾ 0 the error. To determine the achievable minimal heat dissipation of quantum information erasure within a given physical context, we explicitly optimise over all possible unitary operators that act on the composite system of object and reservoir. Specifically, we characterise the equivalence class of such optimal unitary operators, using tools from majorisation theory, when we are restricted to finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. Furthermore, we discuss how pure state preparation processes could be achieved with a smaller heat cost than Landauer's limit, by operating outside of Landauer's framework.
We expand the standard thermodynamic framework of a system coupled to a thermal reservoir by considering a stream of independently prepared units repeatedly put into contact with the system. These units can be in any nonequilibrium state and interact with the system with an arbitrary strength and duration. We show that this stream constitutes an effective resource of nonequilibrium free energy and identify the conditions under which it behaves as a heat, work or information reservoir. We also show that this setup provides a natural framework to analyze information erasure ("Landauer's principle") and feedback controlled systems ("Maxwell's demon"). In the limit of a short system-unit interaction time, we further demonstrate that this setup can be used to provide a thermodynamically sound interpretation to many effective master equations. We discuss how non-autonomously driven systems, micromasers, lasing without inversion, and the electronic Maxwell demon, can be thermodynamically analyzed within our framework. While the present framework accounts for quantum features (e.g. squeezing, entanglement, coherence), we also show that quantum resources do not offer any advantage compared to classical ones in terms of the maximum extractable work.
The erasure of quantum information is governed by two fundamental thermodynamic bounds: Landauer’s principle, which establishes the absolute minimum energetic cost of resetting a state, and Nernst’s unattainability principle, which dictates that perfect cooling to absolute zero entropy requires infinite resources. Under finite constraints, conventional cooling protocols utilizing thermal baths composed of n non-interacting particles are bottlenecked by a linear dissipation barrier (O(1/n)). In this thesis, we establish the ultimate thermodynamic limits of finite-resource multiqubit erasure and introduce the most thermodynamically efficient cooling protocol currently known. Building upon the max-cooling framework—a global unitary operation that systematically sorts the eigenvalues of the joint system-bath state to pack the highest probability mass into the target’s ground state—we engineer a bath Hamiltonian with specific, target-dependent degeneracies for arbitrary m-qubit systems. This collective protocol achieves an optimal asymptotic entropy production scaling of Σ = O(mˆ2/nˆ2), successfully saturating the scaling of the fundamental theoretical lower bound. This degeneracy-optimized approach strictly outperforms both standard non-interacting reservoirs and the best-known protocol for the independent cooling of single qubits using a reservoir of interacting particles (O(mˆ3/nˆ2)). Furthermore, we establish that surpassing conventional dissipation barriers requires an operational threshold of just n ≥ 2mˆ2 bath particles to achieve this optimal scaling.
Erasing memory is a fundamental operational task in quantum information processing, governed by Landauer's principle, which links information loss to thermodynamic work. We introduce and analyze assisted quantum erasure, where correlations with a remote system reduce the energetic cost of resetting a memory. We identify exclusive control of erasure as the central operational requirement: only a designated party should be able to achieve the minimal cost, whereas any adversary must fail. In the device-dependent regime, we show that entanglement of formation exactly characterizes exclusivity, establishing entanglement as the decisive thermodynamic resource. Moving to a one-sided device-independent scenario, in which only the memory holder's device is trusted, we develop an operational erasure protocol based on random dephasing and conditional operations. Finally, in a fully device-independent setting, we show how Bell nonlocality and self-testing translate observed violations into lower bounds on any adversary's erasure capability, yielding a device-independent notion of exclusive thermodynamic control. Taken together, these results elevate quantum erasure from a thermodynamic constraint to an operational primitive: the erasure work cost quantifies secure, exclusive control over quantum memory, ensuring that an unauthorized agent cannot fully erase information under a bounded work budget.
This work develops a control-oriented theoretical framework for the manipulation of transient emission spectra and field-state purity in a qubit interacting with a broadband squeezed reservoir. We model the joint qubit-field dynamics using a time-resolved open quantum system formalism. This establishes a direct, quantitative connection between transient spectral characteristics, quantum purity evolution, and controllable system parameters. The analysis reveals that nonclassical reservoir properties, particularly squeezing-induced correlations, strongly influence both spectral deformation and coherence redistribution during the early-time dynamics. Building on this foundation, the work explores practical control strategies aimed at engineering the system’s dynamical response. Pulse shaping and time-dependent modulation of qubit-reservoir coupling offer effective control tools. These regulate spectral broadening, suppress unwanted decoherence, and accelerate convergence toward stabilized operating regimes. In addition, feedback-assisted qubit probing protocols are investigated as a means of monitoring and controlling field purity while minimizing measurement back-action on the squeezed mode. Our results show that well-designed control loops can balance information extraction and disturbance. This enables efficient regulation of nonclassical field properties. The proposed approach highlights transient spectral measurements as a powerful diagnostic and control resource, linking observable emission features to underlying quantum correlations and purity dynamics. From an engineering perspective, the framework offers practical guidelines. These guide the design of feedback-stabilized quantum emitters and reservoir-engineered coherence control. These findings are directly relevant to emerging quantum technologies, including cavity and circuit quantum electrodynamics, quantum sensing, and quantum communication systems operating in nonclassical environments.
Irreversibility has a fundamental thermodynamic cost, erasing information inevitably generates heat. This connection is quantified by the Landauer bound, which gives the minimum dissipation needed to erase a single bit of information. While this bound applies in both classical and quantum settings, it is saturated only in idealised limits of infinite resources. Here, we provide a unified first principles description of finite-resource erasure in both classical and quantum systems. We begin by proving the communal folklore that in the idealised regime the erasure cost of a bit encoded in a quantum or classical system is the same. Despite this, we show that their practical implementation differs substantially: achieving comparable erasure quality in quantum systems requires more control, larger accessible energy gaps and longer operation times. Classical protocols can achieve the erasure of a comparable quantum protocol under far weaker constraints which we expose in trade-off relations. Our results explain why practical erasure schemes fall short of Landauer's bound and show that classical systems enjoy several fundamental thermodynamic advantages.