Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

How can Maxwell's demon harness quantum many-body correlations?

Akimasa Miyake, Center for Quantum Information and Control, University of New Mexico

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Maxwell's demon is the archetype which underscores the substantial role of information and correlations in the context of thermodynamics. While there is nothing paradoxical about the demon working as a refrigerator if one properly takes the increase of entropy in the demon's own memory into account, it is intriguing how different rules of information and correlations in quantum regime affect the thermodynamic performance of the demon. Here, we extend the memory of the Maxwell's demon to a collection of qubits, and characterize quantum advantages as well as potential limitations by so-called monogamy of entanglement which states that certain kinds of quantum correlations cannot be shared arbitrarily. This is a joint work with Adrian Chapman.