EurekAlert October 16, 2020
Where computing protocols are concerned, finite-time processing in the quantum regime can dynamically generate coherence. An international team of researchers (UK, Ireland) has shown that this can have significant thermodynamic implications. They demonstrated that quantum coherence generated in the energy eigen basis of a system undergoing a finite-time information erasure protocol yields rare events with extreme dissipation. These fluctuations are of purely quantum origin. By studying the full statistics of the dissipated heat in the slow-driving limit, they proved that coherence provides a non-negative contribution to all statistical cumulants. Even a single bit erasure events yield distinct experimentally distinguishable signatures. The findings may have significant implications for the design of quantum computing chips…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
A bit of information can be encoded in the position of a particle (left or right). A demon can erase a classical bit (blue) by raising one side until the particle is definitely on the right. A quantum particle (red) can also tunnel under the barrier, which generates more heat. Credit: Professor Goold, Trinity College Dublin