Speaker
Prof.
Juan Parrondo
(Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Description
Information can be used to extract energy from a single
thermal bath, in apparent contradiction with the Second Law
of Thermodynamics. This observation was first pointed out by
Maxwell in 1867 with the introduction of his celebrated
demon. Since then, the demon has inspired much research on
the relationship between information and entropy, most of it
focused on the thermodynamic cost of the acquisition and
processing of information. In the last years, new tools for
the study of the energetics of small fluctuating systems
–the so-called fluctuation theorems- have provided a better
understanding of the thermodynamics of information. In
this seminar, I will review part of the history of the
Maxwell demon, with special emphasis on these recent
results, trying to give some clues to the fundamental
question: what is information?
