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THERMODYNAMICS OF INFORMATION
Bits for less or more for bits?
Recent advances in the formulation of the second law of thermodynamics have rekindled interest in the
connections between statistical mechanics and information processing. Now a Brownian computer has
approached the theoretical limits set by the rejuvenated second law. Or has it?
Christian Van den Broeck
O
ur home and office computers
happily churn away at information,
day in, day out, and in doing so
they consume an increasing amount of
our energy budget. We expect engineers
to do all they can to improve the energy
efficiency of such machinery. But is there
actually a minimum energy cost? The
Hungarian physicist Le Szilrd was the
first to address this question, in 1929
(ref. 1, see also ref. 2). Szilrd realized that
to store one bit of information, a binary
memory device needs to be compressed
into one of its two possible states. According
to the second law of thermodynamics,
this disorder-decreasing process cannot
happen spontaneously. In fact, it requires
a minimum amount of work, Win, which
Szilrd evaluated to be kTln(2) (where k is
the Boltzmann constant and T temperature).
Conversely, by letting the entropy of the
memory device increase as the information
is erased, an amount of work Wout can be
extracted, which is maximally equal to
kTln(2). Technologically we are still far
away from the Szilrd limit, and one may
wonder how or whether such a beautiful but
delicate result could be verified. One way
is to perform computer simulations, where
results have been obtained that are in perfect
agreement with the theoretical predictions3.
But a real experiment is, of course, more
compelling. Now, writing in Nature Physics,
Shoichi Toyabe and colleagues report exactly
that: a direct verification of information-to-
energy conversion4.
Why are these connections between
energy and information of interest? After
all, kT is an awfully small quantity, about
4 1021 joules. In this unit, the amount
of energy stored in one litre of petrol is
equivalent to 1018 Gbit, much more digital
information than humanity has processed so
far. You may also wonder how this measure,
kT, compares with our own computational
capacity. The human brain consists of some
1011 neurons; assuming that it operates
as a kilohertz binary processor (which I
hope is an under-representation of our
capabilities), the computational power of
nature physics | VOL 6 | DECEMBER 2010 | www.nature.com/naturephysics
fixed energy cost, it would still take another
60 years (109 230, hence 30 times 2 years)
before we reach Szilrds lower limit. And
this is surely a very optimistic estimate.
So why should we care about
information-to-energy conversion? A first
observation is that in the microscopic
world, kT resembles a unit of energy:
kT/2 is the amount of energy contained
in every (quadratic) degree of freedom.
This so-called thermal energy plays an
essential role in many physical, chemical
and biological processes. It is smaller
than, but comparable to, the energy of
a photon, of one ATP-hydrolysis event
istockphoto / nikada
or of one electron transfer across a cell
membrane. There is, however, another
powerful motivation to revisit Szilrds work:
the study of the thermodynamics of small
systems has led to a striking reformulation
of the second law of thermodynamics.
Szilrds result is in fact only correct for
Figure 1 | The only way is up. In the experiments of the average amounts of work, and should
Toyabe et al.3, particles made of polystyrene beads read <Win> kTln(2) <Wout>. The
are subjected to a potential resembling a spiral precise amount of work upon processing
staircase. The potential is interactively adjusted to one bit of information, Win and Wout,
make sure that the particles which are driven will fluctuate from case to case and can
by thermal motion can only climb upwards and violate the bound kTln(2). Once we
therefore constantly gain energy. consider these fluctuating quantities, the
second law of thermodynamics can be
formulated as an equality. In the context
the brain equals 1014 bits per second for an of the Szilrd problem, it is revealing
energetic consumption of 100 watts (which to rewrite the previous inequalities as
is around 1022 kT per second). Hence we are follows: exp(<Win>/kT) 1/2 and
consuming about 108 kT per bit, far above exp(<Wout>/kT) 2. By moving the averaging
Szilrds lower limit. brackets out of the exponentials, it turns
Is kTln(2) then a quantity that engineers out that the inequality signs are replaced
should worry about? For an average by exact equalities: <exp(Win/kT)> = 1/2
modern computer consuming, say, 10 W and <exp(Wout/kT)> = 2. These remarkable
for a gigahertz processor, we get a rough results are a version of an equality
estimate of 1011kT per bit. One might argue formulated by Christopher Jarzynski in
that 99% of this energy requirement is due 1997 (ref. 5), adapted here to the question of
to peripherals. But even taking this into information processing 3.
account, 109kT per bit is still way above In their experiment, Toyabe et al.4
the Szilrd limit. And this is unlikely to use a slightly more involved set-up than
change soon: Moores law states that the the binary memory device considered
number of transistors per integrated circuit by Szilrd, in particular in that it
doubles every two years. If we assume involves feedback control. They make a
unrealistically that this can also be Brownian particle climb up a potential
achieved for the computational power at that resembles a spiral staircase (Fig. 1).
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2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
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To ensure that the particle only moves
up thus gaining energy they apply,
at opportune moments, electric-field
impulses. Identifying opportune moments,
however, requires information, which is
converted into energy in the process. The
generalized Jarzynski equality for this
scenario reads <exp(Wout>/kT) > = , where
the constant includes information on
the efficiency of the feedback control6. In
their experiment, Toyabe and colleagues
convert information to energy at an
amazing <Wout> = 0.28 kT ln(2) per bit.
With their work, they have also verified the
generalized Jarzynski equality.
QuANTuM ENTANGLEMENT
Watching correlations disappear
Engineered decoherence enables tracking of multipartite entanglement as a quantum state decays.
Jonathan Home
E
ntanglement the presence of
physical states of separate objects
where neither can be fully described
independently is one of the most striking
features of quantum mechanics. In systems
of more than two objects, entanglement
can take multiple forms, depending on
the elements between which the quantum
correlations exist. When a system is subject
to decoherence, it evolves between states
with different entanglement properties.
Writing in this issue of Nature Physics,
Julio Barreiro and co-workers report a
precise characterization of the quantum
states produced during decoherence of a
multipartite entangled state comprising four
trapped-ion qubits1. By engineering the type
of decoherence, the team is able to evolve
the system through states showing multiple
forms of entanglement.
Because entanglement refers to the
inability to describe individual parts of a
composite system independently of the
others, to identify entanglement we have
to consider the different ways a system can
be split into separate parts. Barreiro et al.
concentrated on two types of bipartition,
which are those in which the composite
system is split into two parts. In the first
type, the qubits are divided unequally
between the two parts (called a 1:3
partition), whereas in the second they are
divided equally (2:2). In either case, the
entanglement between the two parts split
by the partition can be extracted from the
density matrix, which contains all possible
statistical information about the state. This
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Is such an efficiency too good to be
true? Have physicists achieved what
engineers cannot? The true energetic cost
of this information-to-energy conversion
experiment lies somewhat hidden in its
huge peripheral apparatus (including the
doctoral student who is operating the
experiment). As such, the experiment is
reminiscent of producing a tiny shot of
energy from nuclear fusion in a reactor that
is consuming considerably more energy. But
the principles of Szilrd and Jarzynski have
been verified we can leave the (real) work
on the peripherals to our good and reliable
friends, the engineers
Bell inequality Super 2:2 1:3
violation? activation? entangled entangled
Increasing
Decoherence
Figure 1 | Progression of entanglement properties
as the decoherence of the four-qubit entangled
state increases. The blue oval indicates the
relevant part of the progression when the state is
bound entangled.
is done by performing a partial transpose
operation, where only the part of the density
matrix associated with one side of the
partition is transposed. If a state is entangled
with respect to this partition, the smallest
value of the partially transposed matrix
is negative.
The presence of negative eigenvalues
for the partial transpose taken across a
particular partition has direct consequences
when two parties want to produce a non-
local quantum information channel for
protocols such as quantum teleportation.
Such a channel requires the production
of a pure bipartite entangled state (with
one half of the state at each location) from
multiple copies of the initial state, under
nature physics | VOL 6 | DECEMBER 2010 | www.nature.com/naturephysics
2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
Christian Van den Broeck is in the Physics
Department, Campus Diepenbeek, University of
Hasselt, B-3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium.
e-mail: christian.vandenbroeck@uhasselt.be
References
1. Szilrd, L. Z. Phys. 53, 840856 (1929).
2. Landauer, R. IBM J. Res. Dev. 5, 183191 (1961).
3. Kawai, R., Parrondo, J. M. R. & Van den Broeck, C.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 080602 (2007).
4. Toyabe, S., Sagawa, T., Ueda, M., Muneyuki, E. & Sano, M.
Nature Phys. 6, 988992 (2010).
5. Jarzynski, C. Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 26902693 (1997).
6. Sagawa, T. & Ueda, M. Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 250602 (2009).
Published online: 14 November 2010
the restriction that all copies of the initial
state must be partitioned between the
two ends of the channel in the same way.
The two parties are restricted to using
local quantum operations and a classical
communication channel. For states which
produce a negative partial transpose with
respect to this partition, a procedure called
distillation allows pure state entanglement
to be produced. For some states, however,
entanglement exists that is inaccessible. An
example is a state where 1:3 entanglement
exists without any 2:2 entanglement. Two
users holding multiple copies of this state,
each with two qubits from each copy, could
not distil pure-state entanglement, even
though their state is bipartite entangled. The
1:3 entanglement is tied up in the system,
unavailable as a resource for teleportation.
This form of bipartite entanglement is
known as bound entanglement, and exists
only for multipartite mixed states2.
To study the decay of entanglement,
Barreiro and his colleagues engineered a
particular form of decoherence to act on the
qubits. They invented an intricate two-step
optical pumping technique: first a partial
initial coherent transfer of the electronic
state of the ion between the 1 state of the
qubit and an auxiliary electronic state of
the ion, and then optical pumping of the
auxiliary state back to 1. In the second
step, the scattered photon carries partial
information about the state of the qubit
into the environment. The probability that
an ion starting in the 1 electronic state
is transferred to the auxiliary state by the