Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 114, Issue 42, Pages 11097-11102Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1708689114
Keywords
Shannon entropy; second law; information theory; stochastic thermodynamics; feedback trap
Categories
Funding
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- French Ministry of Education [ANR-15-CE40-0020-01]
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Stochastic thermodynamics extends classical thermodynamics to small systems in contact with one or more heat baths. It can account for the effects of thermal fluctuations and describe systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. A basic assumption is that the expression for Shannon entropy is the appropriate description for the entropy of a nonequilibrium system in such a setting. Here we measure experimentally this function in a system that is in local but not global equilibrium. Our system is a micron-scale colloidal particle in water, in a virtual double-well potential created by a feedback trap. We measure the work to erase a fraction of a bit of information and show that it is bounded by the Shannon entropy for a two-state system. Further, by measuring directly the reversibility of slow protocols, we can distinguish unambiguously between protocols that can and cannot reach the expected thermodynamic bounds.
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