A note on the Landauer principle in quantum statistical mechanics

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Landauer principle within quantum statistical mechanics, demonstrating that under certain conditions, the minimal energy cost for information erasure reaches the theoretical lower bound.

Contribution

It extends the understanding of Landauer's principle to quantum systems coupled with thermal reservoirs, proving saturation of the bound under adiabatic switching using advanced mathematical techniques.

Findings

Landauer's bound can be saturated in quantum models with adiabatic interactions

The study applies Araki's perturbation theory and the Avron-Elgart adiabatic theorem

Comparison with recent work by Reeb and Wolf is discussed.

Abstract

The Landauer principle asserts that the energy cost of erasure of one bit of information by the action of a thermal reservoir in equilibrium at temperature T is never less than $kTlog 2$. We discuss Landauer's principle for quantum statistical models describing a finite level quantum system S coupled to an infinitely extended thermal reservoir R. Using Araki's perturbation theory of KMS states and the Avron-Elgart adiabatic theorem we prove, under a natural ergodicity assumption on the joint system S+R, that Landauer's bound saturates for adiabatically switched interactions. The recent work of Reeb and Wolf on the subject is discussed and compared.