The thermodynamic meaning of negative entropy

Details The thermodynamic meaning of negative entropy The thermodynamic meaning of negative entropy

2010-09-08

arxiv.org/abs/1009.1630v2

Nature 474, 61--63 (2011)

Physics

Quantum Physics

Added clarification on non-cyclic erasure and reversible computation (Appendix E). For a new version of all technical proofs s

Scientific paper

10.1038/nature10123

Landauer's erasure principle exposes an intrinsic relation between thermodynamics and information theory: the erasure of information stored in a system, S, requires an amount of work proportional to the entropy of that system. This entropy, H(S|O), depends on the information that a given observer, O, has about S, and the work necessary to erase a system may therefore vary for different observers. Here, we consider a general setting where the information held by the observer may be quantum-mechanical, and show that an amount of work proportional to H(S|O) is still sufficient to erase S. Since the entropy H(S|O) can now become negative, erasing a system can result in a net gain of work (and a corresponding cooling of the environment).

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