A chemical reaction network implementation of a Maxwell demon

TL;DR

This paper models a chemical Maxwell demon that rectifies thermal fluctuations, analyzes its performance and limitations, and explores its information thermodynamics, revealing fundamental bounds on its macroscopic output.

Contribution

It introduces a chemical analog of a Maxwell demon, providing analytical insights into its scaling, efficiency, and information flow, highlighting differences from electronic counterparts.

Findings

No finite macroscopic output due to nonequilibrium bounds

Analytical expressions for chemical current and power

Information flow patterns and partial efficiencies analyzed

Abstract

We study an autonomous model of a Maxwell demon that works by rectifying thermal fluctuations of chemical reactions. It constitutes the chemical analog of a recently studied electronic demon. We characterize its scaling behavior in the macroscopic limit, its performances, and the impact of potential internal delays. We obtain analytical expressions for all quantities of interest, namely, the generated reverse chemical current, the output power, the transduction efficiency, and the correlations between the numbers of molecules. Due to a bound on the nonequilibrium response of its chemical reaction network, we find that, contrary to the electronic case, there is no way for the Maxwell demon to generate a finite output in the macroscopic limit. Finally, we analyze the information thermodynamics of the Maxwell demon from a bipartite perspective. In the limit of a fast demon, the information flow is obtained, its pattern in the state space is discussed, and the behavior of the partial efficiencies related to the measurement and the feedback processes is examined.