Information erasure without an energy cost

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Vaccaro, Joan A
Barnett, Stephen M
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2011
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Abstract

Landauer argued that the process of erasing the information stored in a memory device incurs an energy cost in the form of a minimum amount of mechanical work. We find, however, that this energy cost can be reduced to zero by paying a cost in angular momentum or any other conserved quantity. Erasing the memory of Maxwell's demon in this way implies that work can be extracted from a single thermal reservoir at a cost of angular momentum and an increase in total entropy. The implications of this for the second law of thermodynamics are assessed.

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Proceedings of the Royal Society A

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467

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2130

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© 2011 Royal Society. This is the author-manuscript version of this paper. Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal website for access to the definitive, published version.

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Subject

Mathematical sciences

Physical sciences

Thermodynamics and statistical physics

Quantum information, computation and communication

Engineering

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