Linear Irreversible Thermodynamics and Onsager Reciprocity for Information-driven Engines

TL;DR

This paper develops a linear irreversible thermodynamics framework incorporating information as a resource, proving Onsager reciprocity and deriving efficiency bounds for information-driven engines, with implications for biological systems.

Contribution

It establishes the Onsager reciprocity in thermodynamics with information and derives universal efficiency bounds for information engines.

Findings

Onsager reciprocity holds with information flow.

A universal efficiency bound at maximum power is derived.

The framework applies to biological systems and information processing.

Abstract

In the recent progress in nonequilibrium thermodynamics, information has been recognized as a kind of thermodynamic resource that can drive thermodynamic current without any direct energy injection. In this paper, we establish the framework of linear irreversible thermodynamics for a broad class of autonomous information processing. In particular, we prove that the Onsager reciprocity holds true with information: The linear response matrix is well-defined, and is shown symmetric with both of the information affinity and the conventional thermodynamic affinity. As an application, we derive a universal bound for the efficiency at maximum power for information-driven engines in the linear regime. Our result reveals the fundamental role of information flow in linear irreversible thermodynamics, and would be applicable to study the role of information in biological systems.