Quantum thermodynamic pump driven by Maxwell’s demon

By considering the actual equivalent circuit model of three quantum dots with Coulomb coupling, a thermodynamic pump driven by Maxwell’s demon is proposed. The pump may be a quantum chemical pump operated between two material reservoirs or a quantum heat pump operated between two heat reservoirs, and the demon may be a subsystem operated between two heat reservoirs or between two material reservoirs. The Markov stochastic thermodynamics is used to analyze how information is generated in the demon, which drives the mass or heat transfer in the pump. Nonequilibrium free energy theorems demonstrate that the information provided by Maxwell’s demon makes the quantum pump work normally without energy input. It is proved that the proposed system does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. Moreover, the modified entropy-production rate containing information flow and the local rates of nonequilibrium free energy of quantum pumps are calculated. The results obtained may be helpful to the deep understanding of the inter-conversion of both information and work.