Maxwell's two-demon engine under pure dephasing noise

The interplay between thermal machines and quantum correlations is of great interest in both quantum thermodynamics and quantum information science. Recently, a quantum Szilard engine has been proposed, showing that the quantum steerability between a Maxwell's demon and a work medium can be beneficial to a work extraction task. Nevertheless, this type of quantum-fueled machine is usually fragile in the presence of decoherence effects. Therefore, in this work we tackle this question by introducing a second demon who can access a control system and make the work medium pass through two dephasing channels in a manner of quantum superposition. Furthermore, we provide a quantum circuit to simulate our proposed concept and test it on IBMQ and IonQ quantum computers.

Automated summary

The interplay between thermal machines and quantum correlations is explored, with a focus on the fragility of quantum-fueled machines in the presence of decoherence effects. A second demon is introduced to address this issue, allowing the work medium to pass through two dephasing channels via quantum superposition. A quantum circuit is proposed and tested on IBMQ and IonQ quantum computers.