QUANTUMLANDAUER · Beating Landauer’s Limit in the Quantum Regime

Irreversible processes, such as resetting a logical register in a computer, result in heat dissipation. Landauer’s principle, linking information theory and thermodynamics, states that there is a minimum amount of heat dissipation, proportional to the reduction in the entropy of the logical register, imposed by the laws of thermodynamics. To possibly beat Landauer’s limit, we must first gain a better understanding of it. As quantum mechanics is our most fundamental theory of matter, such a deeper understanding of Landauer’s principle, which is based on classical physics, requires that it be reformulated in the quantum language. In this proposal we therefore aim to investigate how heat dissipation may be lowered beyond Landauer’s limit by utilising quantum mechanical phenomena, specifically that of quantum uncertainty. The objectives may be enumerated thusly: (i) Uncertainty in the form of environmental noise