All Shook Up: Fluctuations, Maxwell's Demon and the Thermodynamics of Computation

John Norton
2013 Entropy  
The most successful exorcism of Maxwell's demon is Smoluchowski's 1912 observation that thermal fluctuations would likely disrupt the operation of any molecular-scale demonic machine. A later tradition sought to exorcise Maxwell's demon by assessing the entropic cost of the demon's processing of information. This later tradition fails since these same thermal fluctuations invalidate the molecular-scale manipulations upon which the thermodynamics of computation is based. A new argument
more » ... conservation of phase space volume shows that all Maxwell's demons must fail.
doi:10.3390/e15104432 fatcat:q6r2l7ldxfa3tcw7nzfntb7kuq