2021/06/30 by Lorenzo Buffoni, Michele Campisi
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Classical mechanics #Explicit symmetry breaking #Geometry #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Physics #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum mechanics #Spontaneous symmetry breaking #Statistical physics #Symmetry (geometry) #Symmetry breaking #Theoretical physics #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s10955-022-02877-8
published as J. Stat. Phys. 186, 31 (2022) · 16 pages, 5 figures. Introduction revised in v2 and discussion session added in v3
openalex publication_date 2022/01/23 · arxiv created 2022/01/26 · arxiv updated 2022/01/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract We study the problem of the energetic cost of information erasure by looking at it through the lens of the Jarzynski equality. We observe that the Landauer bound, ⟨ W ⟩ ≥ kT ln 2 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>⟨</mml:mo> <mml:mi>W</mml:mi> <mml:mo>⟩</mml:mo> <mml:mo>≥</mml:mo> <mml:mi>k</mml:mi> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> <mml:mo>ln</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , on average dissipated work ⟨ W ⟩ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>⟨</mml:mo> <mml:mi>W</mml:mi> <mml:mo>⟩</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> associated to an erasure process, literally emerges from the underlying second law bound as formulated by Kelvin, ⟨ W ⟩ ≥ 0 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>⟨</mml:mo> <mml:mi>W</mml:mi> <mml:mo>⟩</mml:mo> <mml:mo>≥</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , as consequence of a spontaneous breaking of the Crooks–Tasaki fluctuation-symmetry, that accompanies logical irreversibility. We illustrate and corroborate this insight with numerical simulations of the process of information erasure performed on a 2D Ising ferromagnet.