Composite Particles and the Szilard Engine

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the work extractable from a Szilard engine varies with composite particles made of two interacting fermions, revealing a link between entanglement and work potential.

Contribution

It introduces a study of work extraction from composite particles in the Szilard engine, highlighting the role of entanglement in the process.

Findings

Work extraction depends on entanglement within composite particles.

Composite particles can outperform elementary fermions in work extraction.

Entanglement correlates with increased work potential.

Abstract

The Szilard engine is the simplest possible engine, composed only of one or more particles in a box. The box is then immersed in a heat bath and partitioned into two parts by a wall. It is known that in the cold temperature limit, one may extract more work out of elementary boson than out of elementary fermions. In this paper, we consider the amount of work that can be extracted out of a system of composite particles -- particles which are composed of two interacting elementary fermions of different species. We demonstrate that the amount of work extracted is closely tied to the amount of entanglement within the composite particles