Minimal model of a heat engine: Information theory approach

Physical Review E - Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics

Volumn 82, Issue 1, 2010, Pages

  Zhou, Yun ^a   Segal, Dvira ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENERIC MODELS; INFORMATION TRANSMISSION CHANNEL; IRREVERSIBLE ENERGY; LINEAR RESPONSE; MAXIMUM POWER; MINIMAL MODEL; THERMAL DEVICES;

CHANNEL CAPACITY; ENERGY DISSIPATION; THERMODYNAMICS;

INFORMATION USE;

EID: 77954820915     PISSN: 15393755     EISSN: 15502376     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.82.011120     Document Type: Article

References (18)

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11. Erasure of memory can be viewed as information transmission in channels with an input (e.g., writing zeros to the memory) and an output (reading zeros). For simplicity, assume that the channel suffers from thermal noise in the form of additive white Gaussian noise of temperature T. Hence, the Shannon-Hartley theorem C = B ln [1 + S / (B T)] gives the relation between the rate of memory erasure C and the power of our eraser S. The minimal energy required to erase a unit of information is obtained by minimizing S / C, yielding T, in agreement with Landauer's erasure principle [ln (2) factor is missing since we adopt the units of nats instead of bits]. This value is reached when S → 0, suggesting that minimum energy dissipation is achieved only when the erasure process is infinitely slow. In the engine proposed here the detector sends information to the memory of the processor, erasing old information left in the previous working cycle, realizing Landauer's erasure principle.
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13. Standardly, the units of the channel capacity C are nats/s, and it is given in terms of the signal power S and the noise power N. Here I p is a dimensionless channel capacity, given in terms of the signal and noise averaged energy, S and N 0, respectively. For simplicity, we use 2 pulses as the basic unit for counting information transfer in a channel. This choice does not affect our results.
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18. We refer to this engine as "strongly coupled" since the work attained δ E - Q I is proportional to the energy pumped, δ E = I T H [Eq.].