Maxwell's demon and the thermodynamics of computation
From MaRDI portal
Publication:720453
DOI10.1016/S1355-2198(01)00023-5zbMATH Open1222.82018arXivquant-ph/0203017MaRDI QIDQ720453FDOQ720453
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)
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.
Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0203017
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
- Conservative logic
- Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process
- Logical Reversibility of Computation
- Exorcist XIV: the wrath of Maxwell's demon. I: From Maxwell to Szilard
- EXORCIST XIV: the wrath of Maxwell's demon. II: From Szilard to Landauer and beyond
- Title not available (Why is that?)
- Maxwell's Demon Cannot Operate: Information and Entropy. I
Cited In (17)
- Title not available (Why is that?)
- Notes on Landauer's principle, reversible computation, and Maxwell's demon
- 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
- Data Processing Theorems and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
- Descriptive Complexity of Reversible Languages Having Finitely Many Reduced Automata
- Does a computer have an arrow of time?
- The origins of time-asymmetry in thermodynamics: the minus first law
- Algorithmic thermodynamics
- Thermodynamics of computing: Entropy of nonergodic systems
- Information vs. entropy vs. probability
This page was built for publication: Maxwell's demon and the thermodynamics of computation
Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q720453)
