Work extraction, information-content and the Landauer bound in the continuous Maxwell Demon

TL;DR

This paper introduces a continuous Maxwell demon model capable of extracting significant work through repeated measurements, highlighting the role of the Landauer limit, the continuous measurement process, and the differences from autonomous demons.

Contribution

It presents a novel continuous Maxwell demon framework, analyzing the impact of the Landauer bound and information content on work extraction.

Findings

Reversal of Landauer's inequality under certain stability conditions

Robustness of Shannon information in maximal work extraction scenarios

Demonstration of large work extraction driven by rare event information

Abstract

In a recent paper we have introduced a continuous version of the Maxwell demon (CMD) that is capable of extracting large amounts of work per cycle by repeated measurements of the state of the system. Here we underline its main features such as the role played by the Landauer limit in the average extracted work, the continuous character of the measurement process and the differences between our continuous Maxwell demon and an autonomous Maxwell demon. We demonstrate the reversal of Landauer's inequality depending on the thermodynamical and mechanical stability of the work extracting substance. We also emphasise the robustness of the Shannon definition of the information-content of the stored sequences in the limit where work extraction is maximal and fuelled by the large information-content of rare events.