The Physics of Maxwell's demon and information
arXiv:0707.3400 · doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.81.1
Abstract
Maxwell's demon was born in 1867 and still thrives in modern physics. He plays important roles in clarifying the connections between two theories: thermodynamics and information. Here, we present the history of the demon and a variety of interesting consequences of the second law of thermodynamics, mainly in quantum mechanics, but also in the theory of gravity. We also highlight some of the recent work that explores the role of information, illuminated by Maxwell's demon, in the arena of quantum information theory.
24 pages, 13 figures. v2: some refs added, figs improved
References in corpus (6)
- Quantum Thermodynamic Cycles and quantum heat engines
- On the quantum, classical and total amount of correlations in a quantum state
- Dissipation: The phase-space perspective
- The second law, Maxwell's daemon and work derivable from quantum heat engines
- Quantum Heat Engine With Multi-Level Quantum Systems
- Quantum-Classical Transition of Photon-Carnot Engine Induced by Quantum Decoherence