Maxwell's Refrigerator: An Exactly Solvable Model

Abstract

We describe a simple and solvable model of a device that -- like the "neat-fingered being" in Maxwell's famous thought experiment -- transfers energy from a cold system to a hot system by rectifying thermal fluctuations. In order to accomplish this task, our device requires a memory register to which it can write information: the increase in the Shannon entropy of the memory compensates the decrease in the thermodynamic entropy arising from the flow of heat against a thermal gradient. We construct the nonequilibrium phase diagram for this device, and find that it can alternatively act as an eraser of information. We discuss our model in the context of the second law of thermodynamics.

9 pages (Main Text + Supplemental Material), 3 figures, to appear in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (8)

• The Physics of Maxwell's demon and information
• Second Law of Thermodynamics with Discrete Quantum Feedback Control
• The thermodynamic meaning of negative entropy
• Work and information processing in a solvable model of Maxwell's demon
• Thermodynamics of a physical model implementing a Maxwell demon
• Nonequilibrium Detailed Fluctuation Theorem for Repeated Discrete Feedback
• Extracting work from a single heat bath through feedback
• Information and flux in a feedback controlled Brownian ratchet

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