Thermodynamics of Gambling Demons

TL;DR

This paper explores the thermodynamics of gambling demons that control nonequilibrium processes, deriving new inequalities and fluctuation relations, and experimentally testing these concepts in a single-electron system.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for gambling demons in thermodynamics, deriving universal inequalities and fluctuation relations for classical and quantum processes, with experimental validation.

Findings

Derived second-law-like inequalities for gambling-controlled work.

Established universal stopping-time fluctuation relations.

Experimentally validated results in a single-electron system.

Abstract

We introduce and realize demons that follow a customary gambling strategy to stop a nonequilibrium process at stochastic times. We derive second-law-like inequalities for the average work done in the presence of gambling, and universal stopping-time fluctuation relations for classical and quantum non-stationary stochastic processes. We test experimentally our results in a single-electron box, where an electrostatic potential drives the dynamics of individual electrons tunneling into a metallic island. We also discuss the role of coherence in gambling demons measuring quantum jump trajectories.