The Holevo bound and Landauer's principle

Paul Bracken

Michael Charles Parker, Stuart D. Walker

Janet Anders, Saroosh Shabbir, Stefanie Hilt +1 more

Recent papers discussing thermodynamic processes in strongly coupled quantum systems claim a violation of Landauer's principle and imply a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. If true, this would have powerful consequences. Perpetuum mobiles could be build as long as the operating temperature is brought close to zero. It would also have serious consequences on thermodynamic derivations of information theoretic results, such as the Holevo bound. Here we argue why these claims are erroneous. Correlations occurring in the strongly coupled, quantum domain require a rethink of how entropy, heat and work are calculated. It is shown that a consistent treatment solves the paradox.

Vlatko Vedral

Abstract This chapter discusses the principles of quantum information. The quantum mechanical equivalent of the Shannon noisy-channel communication theorem is obtained, along with some profound statements about the behavior of quantum information during generalised quantum measurements. The latter are very important in studies of quantum entanglement, but also in exploring the connections between thermodynamics, information theory, and quantum physics. This chapter also discusses equalities and inequalities related to entropy, the Holevo bound, capacity of a bosonic channel, information gained through measurements, relative entropy and thermodynamics, entropy increase due to erasure, and Landauer's erasure and data compression.

Galina Nemova

Jurgen Michael Honig, Józef Spałek