Information-Theoretic Bound on the Entropy Production to Maintain a Classical Nonequilibrium Distribution Using Ancillary Control

There are many functional contexts where it is desirable to maintain a mesoscopic system in a nonequilibrium state. However, such control requires an inherent energy dissipation. In this article, we unify and extend a number of works on the minimum energetic cost to maintain a mesoscopic system in a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Horowitz, Jordan M., England, Jeremy L.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Format: Article
Published: MDPI AG 2018
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/114216
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9139-0811
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8414-3153
Description
Summary:There are many functional contexts where it is desirable to maintain a mesoscopic system in a nonequilibrium state. However, such control requires an inherent energy dissipation. In this article, we unify and extend a number of works on the minimum energetic cost to maintain a mesoscopic system in a prescribed nonequilibrium distribution using ancillary control. For a variety of control mechanisms, we find that the minimum amount of energy dissipation necessary can be cast as an information-theoretic measure of distinguishability between the target nonequilibrium state and the underlying equilibrium distribution. This work offers quantitative insight into the intuitive idea that more energy is needed to maintain a system farther from equilibrium. Keywords: nonequilibrium thermodynamics; dissipation; relative entropy