A note on the Landauer principle in quantum statistical mechanics


Abstract in English

The Landauer principle asserts that the energy cost of erasure of one bit of information by the action of a thermal reservoir in equilibrium at temperature T is never less than $kTlog 2$. We discuss Landauers principle for quantum statistical models describing a finite level quantum system S coupled to an infinitely extended thermal reservoir R. Using Arakis perturbation theory of KMS states and the Avron-Elgart adiabatic theorem we prove, under a natural ergodicity assumption on the joint system S+R, that Landauers bound saturates for adiabatically switched interactions. The recent work of Reeb and Wolf on the subject is discussed and compared.

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