The Landauer principle and its violation in the strong coupling regime

Youyang Xu

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2025, vol. 672, issue C

Abstract: The Landauer principle imposes an energy constraint on the deletion of a classical bit of information, often regarded as a restatement of the second law of thermodynamics. In this work, by redefining fundamental thermodynamic quantities, we derive a general equality between the erased information and the dissipated heat under strong system-reservoir coupling. Our analysis reveals that, while the second law remains intact, the Landauer principle can be violated under certain conditions—a violation that may increase information erasure efficiency. To validate our findings experimentally, we solve the master equation for a two-level atom strongly coupled to a reservoir and assess the experimental feasibility through Rabi light-matter interaction, using a well-controlled ultracold ion system to test the derived equality.

Keywords: Landauer principle; Strong coupling; Quantum thermodynamic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:672:y:2025:i:c:s0378437125003048

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2025.130652

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