Seminar: On the relation between information and energy

ABSTRACT

The description of a system's state depends on our information about the system. The more information we have, the lower the entropy we assign to the system. In thermodynamics, key equations include both the energy and entropy of a system. For example, how much work an agent can extract from a system whilst randomizing it depends on how much information the agent has about the system. Similarly, the work cost of resetting a system also depends on how much information (or even entanglement) the agent has about the system. In this talk, I will describe my research into this relation between information and energy from a quantum information theory perspective. This topic is important for the foundations of thermodynamics and quantum information theory, for the problem of heating in computer hardware and for the problem of increasing energy harvesting efficiency.  

Reference:

Yi-Zheng Zhen, Dario Egloff, Kavan Modi, and Oscar Dahlsten, Universal Bound on Energy Cost of Bit Reset in Finite Time, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 190602 (2021).

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Oscar Dahlsten is an associate professor in the department of physics at SUSTech. He earned his masters and PhD from Imperial College London and then worked at ETH Zurich, NUS Singapore and Oxford University. Focusing on quantum information theory, the role of information and intelligence in statistical mechanics, and the foundations of quantum theory, Oscar is one of the pioneers of the nascent single-shot approach to statistical mechanics.