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Entropy Cost of ‘Erasure’ in Physically Irreversible Processes

Author

Listed:
  • Ruth E. Kastner

    (Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740, USA)

  • Andreas Schlatter

    (The Quantum Institute, Gloversville, NY 12078, USA)

Abstract

A restricted form of Landauer’s principle, independent of computational considerations, is shown to hold for thermal systems by reference to the joint entropy associated with conjugate observables. It is shown that the source of the compensating entropy for irreversible physical processes is due to the ontological uncertainty attending values of such mutually incompatible observables, rather than due to epistemic uncertainty, as traditionally assumed in the information-theoretic approach. In particular, it is explicitly shown that erasure of logical (epistemic) information via reset operations is not equivalent to erasure of thermodynamic entropy, so that the traditional, information-theoretic form of Landauer’s principle is not supported by the physics. A further implication of the analysis is that, in principle, there can be no Maxwell’s Demon in the real world.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruth E. Kastner & Andreas Schlatter, 2024. "Entropy Cost of ‘Erasure’ in Physically Irreversible Processes," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-9, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:12:y:2024:i:2:p:206-:d:1315130
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Antoine Bérut & Artak Arakelyan & Artyom Petrosyan & Sergio Ciliberto & Raoul Dillenschneider & Eric Lutz, 2012. "Experimental verification of Landauer’s principle linking information and thermodynamics," Nature, Nature, vol. 483(7388), pages 187-189, March.
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