期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2014
卷号：111
期号：38
页码：13786-13789
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1406966111
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：SignificanceA Maxwell demon makes use of information to convert thermal energy of a reservoir into work. A quantitative example is a thought experiment known as a Szilard engine, which uses one bit of information about the position of a thermalized molecule in a box to extract kBT ln 2 of work. The second law of thermodynamics remains valid because, according to Landauer principle, erasure of the information dissipates at least the same amount of heat. Here, we present an experimental realization of a Maxwell demon similar to a Szilard engine, in the form of a single electron box. We provide, to our knowledge, the first demonstration of extracting nearly kBT ln 2 of work for one bit of information. The most succinct manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics is the limitation imposed by the Landauer principle on the amount of heat a Maxwell demon (MD) can convert into free energy per single bit of information obtained in a measurement. We propose and realize an electronic MD based on a single-electron box operated as a Szilard engine, where kBT ln 2 of heat is extracted from the reservoir at temperature T per one bit of created information. The information is encoded in the position of an extra electron in the box.
