The Broken Engine of Szilard

TL;DR

This paper challenges the traditional understanding of the Szilard engine by showing that its key isothermal expansion step cannot occur when the piston is modeled as a thermal system with energy fluctuations, questioning its fundamental operation.

Contribution

It provides a new perspective by modeling the piston as a thermal system, revealing the impossibility of the isothermal expansion in the Szilard engine.

Findings

The isothermal expansion cannot proceed with a thermally fluctuating piston.

The supposed missing entropy in the Szilard engine is unnecessary.

The cycle of the Szilard engine is fundamentally incomplete under realistic conditions.

Abstract

A crucial step in the operation of the Szilard engine is the isothermal expansion of a single particle system. This expansion, seemingly a natural consequence, is unable to proceed when the piston is considered appropriately to be a thermal system subject to fluctuations in energy at a constant temperature. The Szilard engine is thus unable to complete its cycle and the effort to locate the mysterious missing entropy of turns out to be superfluous.