Emulating a quantum Maxwell's demon with non-separable structured light

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Medina-Segura, Edgar, Obando, Paola C., Mkhumbuza, Light, Galvez, Enrique J., Rosales-Guzmán, Carmelo, Ruffato, Gianluca, Romanato, Filippo, Forbes, Andrew, Nape, Isaac
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Medina-Segura, Edgar
Obando, Paola C.
Mkhumbuza, Light
Galvez, Enrique J.
Rosales-Guzmán, Carmelo
Ruffato, Gianluca
Romanato, Filippo
Forbes, Andrew
Nape, Isaac
author_facet Medina-Segura, Edgar
Obando, Paola C.
Mkhumbuza, Light
Galvez, Enrique J.
Rosales-Guzmán, Carmelo
Ruffato, Gianluca
Romanato, Filippo
Forbes, Andrew
Nape, Isaac
contents Maxwell's demon (MD) has proven an instructive vehicle by which to explore the relationship between information theory and thermodynamics, fueling the possibility of information driven machines. A long standing debate has been the concern of entropy violation, now resolved by the introduction of a quantum MD, but this theoretical suggestion has proven experimentally challenging. Here, we use classical vectorially structured light that is non-separable in spin and orbital angular momentum to emulate a quantum MD experiment. Our classically entangled light fields have all the salient properties necessary of their quantum counterparts but without the experimental complexity of controlling quantum entangled states. We use our experiment to show that the demon's entropy increases during the process while the system's entropy decreases, so that the total entropy is conserved through an exchange of information, confirming the theoretical prediction. We show that our MD is able to extract useful work from the system in the form of orbital angular momentum, opening a path to information driven optical spanners for the mechanical rotation of objects with light. Our synthetic dimensions of angular momentum can easily be extrapolated to other degrees of freedom, for scalable and robust implementations of MDs at both the classical and quantum realms, enlightening the role of a structured light MD and its capability to control and measure information.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_03893
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Emulating a quantum Maxwell's demon with non-separable structured light
Medina-Segura, Edgar
Obando, Paola C.
Mkhumbuza, Light
Galvez, Enrique J.
Rosales-Guzmán, Carmelo
Ruffato, Gianluca
Romanato, Filippo
Forbes, Andrew
Nape, Isaac
Optics
Quantum Physics
Maxwell's demon (MD) has proven an instructive vehicle by which to explore the relationship between information theory and thermodynamics, fueling the possibility of information driven machines. A long standing debate has been the concern of entropy violation, now resolved by the introduction of a quantum MD, but this theoretical suggestion has proven experimentally challenging. Here, we use classical vectorially structured light that is non-separable in spin and orbital angular momentum to emulate a quantum MD experiment. Our classically entangled light fields have all the salient properties necessary of their quantum counterparts but without the experimental complexity of controlling quantum entangled states. We use our experiment to show that the demon's entropy increases during the process while the system's entropy decreases, so that the total entropy is conserved through an exchange of information, confirming the theoretical prediction. We show that our MD is able to extract useful work from the system in the form of orbital angular momentum, opening a path to information driven optical spanners for the mechanical rotation of objects with light. Our synthetic dimensions of angular momentum can easily be extrapolated to other degrees of freedom, for scalable and robust implementations of MDs at both the classical and quantum realms, enlightening the role of a structured light MD and its capability to control and measure information.
title Emulating a quantum Maxwell's demon with non-separable structured light
topic Optics
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.03893