https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20159503034
Quantum measurements and Landauer’s principle
1 National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute”, ac.Kurchatova sq., 1, Moscow 123182 Russia
2 Far Eastern Federal University, Sukhanova str. 8, Vladivostok 690950 Russia
a e-mail: Vladimir. Shevchenko@cern.ch
Published online: 29 May 2015
Information processing systems must obey laws of physics. One of particular examples of this general statement is known as Landauer’s principle - irreversible operations (such as erasure) performed by any computing device at finite temperature have to dissipate some amount of heat bound from below. Together with other results of this kind, Landauer’s principle represents a fundamental limit any modern or future computer must obey.
We discuss interpretation of the physics behind the Landauer’s principle using a model of Unruh-DeWitt detector. Of particular interest is the validity of this limit in quantum domain. We systematically study finite time effects. It is shown, in particular, that in high temperature limit finiteness of measurement time leads to renormalization of the detector’s temperature.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2015
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
