M. Vidrighin

O. Dahlsten

M. Barbieri

M. Kim

V. Vedral

I. Walmsley

With inspiration from Maxwell’s classic thought experiment, it is possible to extract macroscopic work from microscopic measurements of photons.

We report an experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon in a photonic setup. We show that a measurement at the few-photons level followed by a feed-forward operation allows the extraction of work from intense thermal light into an electric circuit. The interpretation of the experiment stimulates the derivation of an equality relating work extraction to information acquired by measurement. We derive a bound using this relation and show that it is in agreement with the experimental results. Our work puts forward photonic systems as a platform for experiments related to information in thermodynamics.

Photonic Maxwell’s demon

Realisation of a demon

Physicists create first photonic Maxwell's demon

Maxwell's Demon Created In Photonic Circuit For First Time Ever

For the first time ever, researchers have replicated effects of Maxwell’s demon  Read more at http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113412564/for-the-first-time-ever-researchers-have-replicated-effects-of-maxwells-demon-021216/#OWPEwBM1OoSORoOP.99

Maxwell's demon lives for light

Photonic Maxwell's demon

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Extreme materials

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Low-energy computing

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Quantum information

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Science of innovation

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Graph theory

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