Quantum semipermeable barriers: Investigating Maxwell's demon toolbox.

Abstract

We study quantum Maxwell's demon in a discrete space-time setup. We consider a collection of particles hopping on a one-dimensional chain and a semipermeable barrier that allows the particles to hop in only one direction. Our main result is a formulation of a local unitary dynamics describing the action of this barrier. Such dynamics utilizes an auxiliary system A and we study how properties of A influence the behavior of particles. An immediate consequence of unitarity is the fact that particles cannot be trapped on one side of the barrier forever, unless A is infinite. In addition, coherent superpositions and quantum correlations are affected once particles enter the confinement region. Finally, we show that initial superposition of A allows the barrier to act as a beam splitter.