Information processing and the second law of thermodynamics: an inclusive, Hamiltonian approach

Understand

We obtain generalizations of the Kelvin-Planck, Clausius, and Carnot statements of the second law of thermodynamics, for situations involving information processing.

• To this end, we consider an information reservoir (representing, e.g.
• a memory device) alongside the heat and work reservoirs that appear in traditional thermodynamic analyses.
• We derive our results within an inclusive framework in which all participating elements -- the system or device of interest, together with the heat, work and information reservoirs -- are modeled explicitly by a time-independent, classical Hamiltonian.