Enhanced Photonic Maxwell's Demon with Correlated Baths

Abstract

Maxwell's Demon is at the heart of the interrelation between quantum information processing and thermodynamics. In this thought experiment, a demon generates a temperature gradient between two thermal baths initially at equilibrium by gaining information at the single-particle level and applying classical feed-forward operations, allowing for the extraction of work. Here we implement a photonic version of Maxwell's Demon with active feed-forward in a fibre-based system using ultrafast optical switches. We experimentally show that, if correlations exist between the two thermal baths, the Demon can generate a temperature difference over an order of magnitude larger than without correlations, and so extract more work. Our work demonstrates the great potential of photonic experiments -- which provide a unique degree of control on the system -- to access new regimes in quantum thermodynamics.

25 pages with appendix, 6 figures. Final version published on Quantum

References in corpus (10)

• The Physics of Maxwell's demon and information
• Second Law of Thermodynamics with Discrete Quantum Feedback Control
• Experimental Test of Quantum Jarzynski Equality with a Trapped Ion System
• Experimental study of mutual information in a Maxwell Demon
• Work measurement as a generalized quantum measurement
• Adding control to arbitrary unknown quantum operations
• Quantum Simulation of single-qubit thermometry using linear optics
• Photon bunching in parametric down-conversion with continuous wave excitation
• Fiber-compatible photonic feed-forward with 99% fidelity
• Power of an optical Maxwell's demon in the presence of photon-number correlations

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• Optimal performance of a three stroke heat engine in the microscopic regime
• Continuous Three-level Quantum Heat Engine with High Performance Under Medium Temperature Difference
• Toward an Experimental Device-Independent Verification of Indefinite Causal Order
• Distributing quantum correlations through local operations and classical resources