Landauer erasure for quantum systems

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi, Fizik Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2009

Öğrenci: ÇAĞAN AKSAK

Danışman: SADİ TURGUT

Özet:

Maxwell’s thought experiment on a demon performing microscopic actions and violating the second law of thermodynamics has been a challenging paradox for a long time. It is finally resolved in the seventies and eighties by using Landauer’s principle, which state that erasing information is necessarily accompanied with a heat dumped to the environment. The purpose of this study is to describe the heat dumped to the environment associated with erasure operations on quantum systems. To achieve this, first a brief introduction to necessary tools like density matrix formalism, quantum operators and entropy are given. Second, the Maxwell’s demon and Szilard model is described. Also the connection between information theory and physics is discussed via this model. Finally, heat transfer operators associated with quantum erasure operations are defined and all of their properties are obtained.