Finite-time Landauer principle beyond weak coupling

Landauer's principle gives a fundamental limit to the thermodynamic cost of erasing information. Its saturation requires a re-versible isothermal process, and hence infi-nite time. We develop a finite-time version of Landauer's principle for a bit encoded in the occupation of a single fermionic mode, which can be strongly coupled to a reservoir. By solving the exact non-equilibrium dynamics, we optimize era -sure processes (taking both the fermion's energy and system-bath coupling as con-trol parameters) in the slow driving regime through a geometric approach to thermo-dynamics. We find analytic expressions for the thermodynamic metric and geodesic equations, which can be solved numeri-cally. Their solution yields optimal pro-cesses that allow us to characterize a finite-time correction to Landauer's bound, fully taking into account strong coupling effects. Our result suggests the emergence of the Planckian time, tau Pl = PLANCK CONSTANT OVER TWO PI/kBT , as the short -est timescale for information erasure.

Automated summary

This study develops a finite-time version of Landauer's principle, which optimizes erasure processes by considering the fermion's energy and system-bath coupling and takes into account strong coupling effects. The results suggest the emergence of the Planckian time as the shortest timescale for information erasure.