Generalized Continuous Maxwell Demons

Abstract

We introduce a family of Generalized Continuous Maxwell Demons (GCMDs) operating on idealized single-bit equilibrium devices that combine the single-measurement Szilard and the repeated measurements of the Continuous Maxwell Demon protocols. We derive the cycle distributions for extracted work, information-content, and time and compute the power and information-to-work efficiency fluctuations for the different models. We show that the efficiency at maximum power is maximal for an opportunistic protocol of continuous type in the dynamical regime dominated by rare events. We also extend the analysis to finite-time work extracting protocols by mapping them to a three-state GCMD. We show that dynamical finite-time correlations in this model increase the information-to-work conversion efficiency, underlining the role of temporal correlations in optimizing information-to-energy conversion. The effect of finite-time work extraction and demon memory resetting is also analyzed. We conclude that GCMD models are thermodynamically more efficient than the single-measurement Szilard and preferred for describing biological processes in an information-redundant world.

8 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (8)

• The Physics of Maxwell's demon and information
• Thermodynamics of a physical model implementing a Maxwell demon
• The unlikely Carnot efficiency
• Large work extraction and the Landauer limit in a continuous Maxwell demon
• Erasure without work in an asymmetric, double-well potential
• Thermodynamics of Gambling Demons
• Efficiency fluctuations and noise induced refrigerator-to-heater transition in information engines
• N-States Continuous Maxwell Demon

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Methods and Conversations in (Post)Modern Thermodynamics
• Exactly solvable diffusions from space-time transformations
• Noninvasive and nonadiabatic quantum Maxwell demon
• N-States Continuous Maxwell Demon
• Thermodynamic Cost of Random-Time Protocols