Experimental realization of a Szilard engine with a single electron.
Koski JVLow Temperature Laboratory, Aalto University, FI-00076, Aalto, Finland; jonne.koski@aalto.fi.
Maisi VFLow Temperature Laboratory, Aalto University, FI-00076, Aalto, Finland; Centre for Metrology and Accreditation, 02151, Espoo, Finland; Department of Physics, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland; and.
Pekola JPLow Temperature Laboratory, Aalto University, FI-00076, Aalto, Finland;
Averin DVDepartment of Physics and Astronomy, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3800.
2014-09-10
Published in:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - 2014
English
The most succinct manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics is the limitation imposed by the Landauer principle on the amount of heat a Maxwell demon (MD) can convert into free energy per single bit of information obtained in a measurement. We propose and realize an electronic MD based on a single-electron box operated as a Szilard engine, where kBT ln 2 of heat is extracted from the reservoir at temperature T per one bit of created information. The information is encoded in the position of an extra electron in the box.