2018/11/30 by Rafael Sánchez, Janine Splettstoesser, Robert S. Whitney · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.optics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.123.216801
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 216801 (2019) · final version: 6 pages, 4 figures (minor typos corrected - very minor title change to fit PRL style)
arxiv created 2019/12/06 · arxiv updated 2019/12/09
Maxwell demons are creatures that are imagined to be able to reduce the entropy of a system without performing any work on it. Conventionally, such a Maxwell demon's intricate action consists of measuring individual particles and subsequently performing feedback. Here we show that much simpler setups can still act as demons: we demonstrate that it is sufficient to exploit a non-equilibrium distribution to seemingly break the second law of thermodynamics. We propose both an electronic and an optical implementation of this phenomenon, realizable with current technology.