Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 21: Stochastic Thermodynamics

DY 21.11: Talk

Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 12:30–12:45, ZEU/0114

Information as a Thermodynamic Resource in Non-Markovian Stochastic Systems — •Lokesh Chinnakanna Muruga, Felix Ginot, and Clemens Bechinger — Fachbereich Physik, Universität Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

The interplay between information and thermodynamics lies at the core of modern stochastic physics. Classical thermodynamics links quantities such as entropy, temperature, and free energy solely to the physical state of a system. Contemporary developments from Maxwell demon and Szilard engine led to fluctuation theorems which revealed that information itself acts as a thermodynamic resource. The acquisition, storage, and use of information can reshape energy landscapes, enable work extraction, and modulate entropy production without violating the second law. In this work, we explore how information stored in unobserved degrees of freedom affects work extraction and equilibrium dynamics in stochastic systems. Using time-resolved position measurements of an optically trapped Brownian particle in a non-Markovian fluid, we show that correlations in the measurement encode memory effects that reveal multiple hidden configurational states. We introduce a new protocol to distinguish these information-bearing states experimentally and quantify their influence on relaxation and work extraction efficiency. Our results highlight how information, whether explicit or hidden can be leveraged as a functional resource for energy extraction and control at the microscale.

Keywords: Non-Markovian; Information Processing; Stochastic systems; Fluctuations; Maxwell's Demon