Maximum work extraction and implementation costs for non-equilibrium Maxwell's demons

Abstract

In this theoretical study, we determine the maximum amount of work extractable in finite time by a demon performing continuous measurements on a quadratic Hamiltonian system subjected to thermal fluctuations, in terms of the information extracted from the system. This is in contrast to many recent studies that focus on demons' maximizing the extracted work over received information, and operate close to equilibrium. The maximum work demon is found to apply a high-gain continuous feedback using a Kalman-Bucy estimate of the system state. A simple and concrete electrical implementation of the feedback protocol is proposed, which allows for analytic expressions of the flows of energy and entropy inside the demon. This let us show that any implementation of the demon must necessarily include an external power source, which we prove both from classical thermodynamics arguments and from a version of Landauer's memory erasure argument extended to non-equilibrium linear systems.