Universal validity of the second law of information thermodynamics
Abstract Adiabatic measurements, followed by feedback and erasure protocols, have often been considered as a model to embody Maxwell’s Demon paradox and to study the interplay between thermodynamics and information processing. Such studies have led to the conclusion, now widely accepted in the commu...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Nature Portfolio
2025-02-01
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| Series: | npj Quantum Information |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-024-00922-w |
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| author | Shintaro Minagawa M. Hamed Mohammady Kenta Sakai Kohtaro Kato Francesco Buscemi |
| author_facet | Shintaro Minagawa M. Hamed Mohammady Kenta Sakai Kohtaro Kato Francesco Buscemi |
| author_sort | Shintaro Minagawa |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Adiabatic measurements, followed by feedback and erasure protocols, have often been considered as a model to embody Maxwell’s Demon paradox and to study the interplay between thermodynamics and information processing. Such studies have led to the conclusion, now widely accepted in the community, that Maxwell’s Demon and the second law of thermodynamics can peacefully coexist because any gain provided by the demon must be offset by the cost of performing the measurement and resetting the demon’s memory to its initial state. Statements of this kind are collectively referred to as second laws of information thermodynamics and have recently been extended to include quantum theoretical scenarios. However, previous studies in this direction have made several assumptions, particularly about the feedback process and the demon’s memory readout, and thus arrived at statements that are not universally applicable and whose range of validity is not clear. In this work, we fill this gap by precisely characterizing the full range of quantum feedback control and erasure protocols that are overall consistent with the second law of thermodynamics. This leads us to conclude that the second law of information thermodynamics is indeed universal: it must hold for any quantum feedback control and erasure protocol, regardless of the measurement process involved, as long as the protocol is overall compatible with thermodynamics. Our comprehensive analysis not only encompasses new scenarios but also retrieves previous ones, doing so with fewer assumptions. This simplification contributes to a clearer understanding of the theory. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-350e6c42f8014ed198d540996ddbc436 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2056-6387 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-02-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | npj Quantum Information |
| spelling | doaj-art-350e6c42f8014ed198d540996ddbc4362025-02-09T12:49:03ZengNature Portfolionpj Quantum Information2056-63872025-02-0111111410.1038/s41534-024-00922-wUniversal validity of the second law of information thermodynamicsShintaro Minagawa0M. Hamed Mohammady1Kenta Sakai2Kohtaro Kato3Francesco Buscemi4Graduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University, Furo-choQuIC, École Polytechnique de Bruxelles, CP 165/59, Université Libre de BruxellesGraduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University, Furo-choGraduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University, Furo-choGraduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University, Furo-choAbstract Adiabatic measurements, followed by feedback and erasure protocols, have often been considered as a model to embody Maxwell’s Demon paradox and to study the interplay between thermodynamics and information processing. Such studies have led to the conclusion, now widely accepted in the community, that Maxwell’s Demon and the second law of thermodynamics can peacefully coexist because any gain provided by the demon must be offset by the cost of performing the measurement and resetting the demon’s memory to its initial state. Statements of this kind are collectively referred to as second laws of information thermodynamics and have recently been extended to include quantum theoretical scenarios. However, previous studies in this direction have made several assumptions, particularly about the feedback process and the demon’s memory readout, and thus arrived at statements that are not universally applicable and whose range of validity is not clear. In this work, we fill this gap by precisely characterizing the full range of quantum feedback control and erasure protocols that are overall consistent with the second law of thermodynamics. This leads us to conclude that the second law of information thermodynamics is indeed universal: it must hold for any quantum feedback control and erasure protocol, regardless of the measurement process involved, as long as the protocol is overall compatible with thermodynamics. Our comprehensive analysis not only encompasses new scenarios but also retrieves previous ones, doing so with fewer assumptions. This simplification contributes to a clearer understanding of the theory.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-024-00922-w |
| spellingShingle | Shintaro Minagawa M. Hamed Mohammady Kenta Sakai Kohtaro Kato Francesco Buscemi Universal validity of the second law of information thermodynamics npj Quantum Information |
| title | Universal validity of the second law of information thermodynamics |
| title_full | Universal validity of the second law of information thermodynamics |
| title_fullStr | Universal validity of the second law of information thermodynamics |
| title_full_unstemmed | Universal validity of the second law of information thermodynamics |
| title_short | Universal validity of the second law of information thermodynamics |
| title_sort | universal validity of the second law of information thermodynamics |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-024-00922-w |
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