Information-Assisted Carnot Engine Surpasses Standard Thermodynamic Bounds

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new Carnot information machine that leverages information to surpass traditional thermodynamic efficiency limits, enabling higher efficiency and work extraction in regimes previously considered impossible.

Contribution

The paper develops a quantitative relationship between information and engine performance, demonstrating that information can enable heat engines to operate beyond standard Carnot bounds.

Findings

CIE can operate where standard Carnot cycle is prohibited

Efficiency of CIE is greater than or equal to Carnot efficiency

CIE can achieve 100% efficiency with positive work in two-level systems

Abstract

Information can improve heat engine performance, but the underlying principles are still not so clear. Here we introduce a Carnot information machine (CIE) and obtain a quantitative relationship between the engine performance and information. We demonstrate that the presence of information changes allows the CIE to operate as a heat engine in the regime where the standard Carnot cycle is prohibited, ensures that the efficiency of the CIE is greater than or equal to the standard Carnot efficiency, and significantly enables it to achieve 100\% efficiency with positive work extraction for arbitrary two-level systems. We explicitly demonstrate these features using a spin-1/2 system and propose an experimental implementation scheme based on a trapped $^{40}\mathrm{Ca}^+$ ion.