A note on the Landauer principle in quantum statistical mechanics
Claude-alain Pillet · 2015
Abstract. 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 kBT log 2. We discuss Landauer’s principle for quantum statistical models describing a finite level quantum system S coupled to an infinitely extended thermal reservoirR. Using Araki’s 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 Landauer’s bound saturates for adiabatically switched interactions. The recent work [ReWo] on the subject is discussed and compared. 1