Validity of Landauer's principle in the quantum regime

TL;DR

This paper confirms Landauer's erasure principle holds in the strong coupling quantum regime by analyzing the system-reservoir interaction and its effects on energy and entropy, emphasizing the importance of the Hamiltonian of mean force.

Contribution

It provides a consistent treatment of system-reservoir interactions in the quantum regime, demonstrating the principle's validity and deriving explicit entropy expressions for a damped quantum harmonic oscillator.

Findings

Landauer's principle remains valid in strong coupling quantum systems.

System-reservoir interaction modifies energy and entropy significantly.

Explicit entropy expressions involve the Hamiltonian of mean force.

Abstract

We demonstrate the validity of Landauer's erasure principle in the strong coupling quantum regime by treating the system-reservoir interaction in a consistent way. We show that the initial coupling to the reservoir modifies both energy and entropy of the system and provide explicit expressions for the latter in the case of a damped quantum harmonic oscillator. These contributions are related to the Hamiltonian of mean force and dominate in the strong damping limit. They need therefore to be fully taken into account in any low-temperature thermodynamic analysis of quantum systems.