Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2013 Jul 19;111(3):030602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.030602.
We describe a simple and solvable model of a device that-like the "neat-fingered being" in Maxwell's famous thought experiment-transfers energy from a cold system to a hot system by rectifying thermal fluctuations. In order to accomplish this task, our device requires a memory register to which it can write information: the increase in the Shannon entropy of the memory compensates the decrease in the thermodynamic entropy arising from the flow of heat against a thermal gradient. We construct the nonequilibrium phase diagram for this device, and find that it can alternatively act as an eraser of information. We discuss our model in the context of the second law of thermodynamics.
我们描述了一个简单且可解的模型设备，该设备——类似于麦克斯韦著名思想实验中的“灵巧手指的存在”——通过对热波动进行整流，将能量从冷系统传递到热系统。为了完成这项任务，我们的设备需要一个内存寄存器来写入信息：内存的香农熵的增加补偿了由于热量逆热梯度流动而产生的热力学熵的减少。我们构建了这个设备的非平衡相图，并发现它可以作为信息擦除器。我们在热力学第二定律的背景下讨论了我们的模型。
