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Published on: May 29, 2014
Information and Thermodynamics: Fast and Precise Approach to Landauer's Bound in an Underdamped Micromechanical
Salambô Dago1, Jorge Pereda1, Nicolas Barros1
1Univ Lyon, ENS de Lyon, CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique, F-69342 Lyon, France.
Abstract:
The Landauer principle states that at least k_{B}Tln2 of energy is required to erase a 1-bit memory, with k_{B}T the thermal energy of the system. We study the effects of inertia on this bound using as one-bit memory an underdamped micromechanical oscillator confined in a double-well potential created by a feedback loop. The potential barrier is precisely tunable in the few k_{B}T range. We measure, within the stochastic thermodynamic framework, the work and the heat of the erasure protocol. We demonstrate experimentally and theoretically that, in this underdamped system, the Landauer bound is reached with a 1% uncertainty, with protocols as short as 100 ms.
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