Szilard Engine Simulations

An animation of the time dependent potential described in chapter 2 section 4 of the dissertation. Note the separation into the six distinct steps of the protocol

  1. Lowering the 00,01 and 10,11 barrier.
  2. Making 00 and 11 energetically favorable.
  3. Re-engaging the lowered barriers.
  4. Lowering the 00,10 and 01,11 barriers.
  5. Re-establishing all wells as energetically equivalent.
  6. Re-engaging the lowered barriers.

A sample of trajectories undergoing the Szilard engine protocol above. The timescale and energetic barriers are not tuned for a high fidelity or low work operation, but instead are tuned to be illustrative of the thermal effects that can cause errors in the computation. Here the timescale of operation is such that the instantaneous distribution is not globally in equilibrium, but still approximately in equilibrium within any particular well.