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.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1770-1778 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Proceedings A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences |
Volume | 467 |
Issue number | 2130 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 8 Jun 2011 |
Keywords
- information erasure
- thermodynamics
- canonical ensemble
- spin system