Information is not physical

Abstract

The standard relations between information theory and thermodynamics are challenged. The Szilard engine is revisited and the bound proposed by Landauer is replaced by a different one which includes errors in information processing. Instead of equivalence, complementarity of information and thermodynamical entropy is advocated. Finally, the relations between error correction and self-replication of states which can carry information are discussed.

13 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Information heat engine: converting information to energy by feedback control
• Efficient simulation scheme for a class of quantum optics experiments with non-negative Wigner representation