Nonequilibrium System as a Demon

Phys Rev Lett. 2019 Nov 22;123(21):216801. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.216801.

Abstract

Maxwell demons are creatures that are imagined to be able to reduce the entropy of a system without performing any work on it. Conventionally, such a Maxwell demon's intricate action consists of measuring individual particles and subsequently performing feedback. We show that much simpler setups can still act as demons: we demonstrate that it is sufficient to exploit a nonequilibrium distribution to seemingly break the second law of thermodynamics. We propose both an electronic and an optical implementation of this phenomenon, realizable with current technology.