The Broken Engine of Szilard
Quanmin Guo

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.
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Taxonomy
TopicsAdvanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics · thermodynamics and calorimetric analyses · Advanced Thermodynamic Systems and Engines
