Finite-time Landauer principle beyond weak coupling

Quantum 7, 1161 (2023).

https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2023-11-03-1161

Landauer’s principle gives a fundamental limit to the thermodynamic cost of erasing information. Its saturation requires a reversible isothermal process, and hence infinite 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 erasure processes (taking both the fermion’s energy and system-bath coupling as control parameters) in the slow driving regime through a geometric approach to thermodynamics. We find analytic expressions for the thermodynamic metric and geodesic equations, which can be solved numerically. Their solution yields optimal processes that allow us to characterize a finite-time correction to Landauer’s bound, fully taking into account non-markovian and strong coupling effects.