Quantum Szilard Engine

Abstract

The Szilard engine (SZE) is the quintessence of Maxwell's demon, which can extract the work from a heat bath by utilizing information. We present the first complete quantum analysis of the SZE, and derive an analytic expression of the quantum-mechanical work performed by a quantum SZE containing an arbitrary number of molecules, where it is crucial to regard the process of insertion or removal of a wall as a legitimate thermodynamic process. We find that more (less) work can be extracted from the bosonic (fermionic) SZE due to the indistinguishability of identical particles.

4 pages, 3 figures + supplementary information