Measurement and Particle Statistics in the Szilard Engine

Abstract

A Szilard Engine is a hypothetical device which is able to extract work from a single thermal reservoir by measuring the position of particles within the engine. We derive the amount of work that can be extracted from such a device in the low temperature limit. Interestingly, we show this work is determined by the information gain of the initial measurement rather than by the number and type of particles which constitute the working substance. Our work provides another clear connection between information gain and extractable work in thermodynamical processes.

4 pages

References in corpus (3)

• Quantum Szilard Engine
• Heat engine driven by purely quantum information
• Comment on "Quantum Szilard Engine"

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Quantum thermal machines and batteries
• Photonic Maxwell's demon
• Experimental rectification of entropy production by a Maxwell's Demon in a quantum system
• Bosons Outperform Fermions -- The Thermodynamic Advantage of Symmetry
• A quantum Szilard engine without heat from a thermal reservoir
• Autonomous Maxwell's demon in a cavity QED system
• Eliminating Ensembles from Equilibrium Statistical Physics: Maxwell's Demon, Szilard's Engine, and Thermodynamics via Entanglement
• Landauer's Principle in a Quantum Szilard Engine Without Maxwell's Demon
• Enhanced energy transfer to an optomechanical piston from indistinguishable photons
• Thermodynamics of Permutation-Invariant Quantum Many-Body Systems: A Group-Theoretical Framework
• Mixing indistinguishable systems leads to a quantum Gibbs paradox
• Bosonic Szilard Engine Assisted by Feshbach Resonances
• Supremacy of the quantum many-body Szilard engine with attractive bosons