Invalidity of the Landauer inequality for information erasure in the quantum regime

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the classical Landauer principle, which bounds heat generation during information erasure, does not hold in quantum regimes where entanglement can lead to more efficient information processing.

Contribution

The study reveals the invalidity of the Landauer inequality in quantum entangled systems, challenging traditional thermodynamic limits on information erasure.

Findings

Quantum entanglement breaks the Landauer bound.

Quantum information carriers can be more thermodynamically efficient.

Classical thermodynamic laws do not fully apply in quantum regimes.

Abstract

A known aspect of the Clausius inequality is that an equilibrium system subjected to a squeezing $\d S<0$ of its entropy must release at least an amount $|\dbarrm Q|=T|\d S|$ of heat. This serves as a basis for the Landauer principle, which puts a lower bound $T\ln 2$ for the heat generated by erasure of one bit of information. Here we show that in the world of quantum entanglement this law is broken, suggesting that quantum carriers of information can be more efficient than assumed so far.