Berlin 2014 – scientific programme

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MP: Fachverband Theoretische und Mathematische Grundlagen der Physik

MP 2: Quanten-Information II

MP 2.3: Talk

Monday, March 17, 2014, 17:10–17:30, SPA SR125

An improved Landauer Principle with finite-size corrections and applications to statistical physics — •David Reeb and Michael Marc Wolf — Department of Mathematics, Technische Universität München, 85748 Garching, Germany

Landauer's Principle necessitates a fundamental energy cost for the erasure of data in the form of heat dissipation. Theoretical justifications of this limit rely so far on specific models based on arguable assumptions and are often confined to classical physics. In this work, we clarify the minimal setup to formulate Landauer's Principle in precise terms, and provide a rigorous proof of an improved version of the Principle, which is formulated in terms of an equality rather than an inequality. The proof is based on quantum statistical physics concepts instead of thermodynamic reasoning. From this equality version we obtain explicit improvements of Landauer's bound that depend on the effective size of the reservoir. For this, we employ new entropy inequalities which also give energy-time tradeoffs in thermodynamic situations such as the Clausius Theorem and are of independent interest in information theory. Our treatment of Landauer's Principle furthermore implies a generalized Carnot efficiency bound.