Quantum Szilard Engine

TL;DR

This paper provides the first comprehensive quantum analysis of the Szilard engine, deriving an analytic expression for the work performed and highlighting differences based on particle statistics.

Contribution

It introduces a complete quantum framework for the Szilard engine, including the effects of particle indistinguishability and wall insertion/removal as thermodynamic processes.

Findings

More work can be extracted from bosonic SZE

Less work can be extracted from fermionic SZE

Analytic expression for quantum work in SZE with arbitrary molecules

Abstract

The Szilard engine (SZE) is the quintessence of Maxwell's demon, which can extract the work from a heat bath by utilizing information. We present the first complete quantum analysis of the SZE, and derive an analytic expression of the quantum-mechanical work performed by a quantum SZE containing an arbitrary number of molecules, where it is crucial to regard the process of insertion or removal of a wall as a legitimate thermodynamic process. We find that more (less) work can be extracted from the bosonic (fermionic) SZE due to the indistinguishability of identical particles.