Maxwell's demon and the thermodynamics of computation

DOI10.1016/S1355-2198(01)00023-5MaRDI QIDQ720453zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Jeffrey Bub

Publication date 15 October 2011

Published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Part B. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0203017

zbMATH Keywords

informationmeasurementMaxwell's demonthermodynamics of computation

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Measures of information, entropy (94A17) Foundations of equilibrium statistical mechanics (82B03)

Abstract: It is generally accepted, following Landauer and Bennett, that the process of measurement involves no minimum entropy cost, but the erasure of information in resetting the memory register of a computer to zero requires dissipating heat into the environment. This thesis has been challenged recently in a two-part article by Earman and Norton. I review some relevant observations in the thermodynamics of computation and argue that Earman and Norton are mistaken: there is in principle no entropy cost to the acquisition of information, but the destruction of information does involve an irreducible entropy cost.

Recommendations

• Eaters of the lotus: Landauer's principle and the return of Maxwell's demon
• EXORCIST XIV: the wrath of Maxwell's demon. II: From Szilard to Landauer and beyond
• Information erasure without an energy cost
• Entropy and computation: the Landauer-Bennett thesis reexamined
• DEMONIC programming: a computational language for single-particle equilibrium thermodynamics, and its formal semantics.

Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3692653 (Why is no real title available?)
• Conservative logic
• EXORCIST XIV: the wrath of Maxwell's demon. II: From Szilard to Landauer and beyond
• Exorcist XIV: the wrath of Maxwell's demon. I: From Maxwell to Szilard
• Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process
• Logical Reversibility of Computation
• Maxwell's Demon Cannot Operate: Information and Entropy. I

Cited in

(26)

• Notes on Landauer's principle, reversible computation, and Maxwell's demon
• The stochastic thermodynamics of computation
• Entropy and computation: the Landauer-Bennett thesis reexamined
• All shook up: fluctuations, Maxwell's demon and the thermodynamics of computation
• Beyond Landauer erasure
• The physics of implementing logic: Landauer's principle and the multiple-computations theorem
• Eaters of the lotus: Landauer's principle and the return of Maxwell's demon
• The (absence of a) relationship between thermodynamic and logical reversibility
• The connection between logical and thermodynamic irreversibility
• The use of the information-theoretic entropy in thermodynamics
• EXORCIST XIV: the wrath of Maxwell's demon. II: From Szilard to Landauer and beyond
• Data Processing Theorems and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
• Reversible languages having finitely many reduced automata
• Descriptive Complexity of Reversible Languages Having Finitely Many Reduced Automata
• Does a computer have an arrow of time?
• The cost of erasing information
• Overwriting information: correlations, physical costs, and environment models
• On the thermodynamical cost of some interpretations of quantum theory
• The origins of time-asymmetry in thermodynamics: the minus first law
• Algorithmic thermodynamics
• Dependence of dissipation on the initial distribution over states
• Thermodynamics of computing: Entropy of nonergodic systems
• Information erasure without an energy cost
• Thermodynamics of information processing in small systems
• DEMONIC programming: a computational language for single-particle equilibrium thermodynamics, and its formal semantics.
• Information vs. entropy vs. probability

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