Maxwell's demon
In the philosophy of thermal and statistical physics, Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment created by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell to "show that the Second Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty". It demonstrates Maxwell's point by hypothetically describing how to violate the Second Law: a container of gas molecules at equilibrium, is divided into two parts by an insulated wall, with a door that can be opened and closed by what came to be called "Maxwell's demon". The demon opens the door to allow only the faster than average molecules to flow through to a favored side of the chamber, and only the slower than average molecules to the other side, causing the favored side to gradually heat up while the other side cools down, thus decreasing entropy.
Maxwell's demon and the molecule will fly from A to B. Likewise, when a slower-than-average molecule from B flies towards the trapdoor, the demon will let it pass from B to A. The average speed of the molecules in B will have increased while in A they will have slowed down on average. Since average molecular speed corresponds to temperature, the temperature decreases in A and increases in B, contrary to the second law of thermodynamics. Note that the demon must allow molecules to pass in both directions in order to produce only a temperature difference; one-way passage only of faster-than-average molecules from A to B will cause higher temperature and pressure to develop on the B side. In fact, because temperature and pressure are related, if A and B both contain the same numbers of molecule per unit volume, the one with the higher temperature will also have higher pressure; the demon must actually let more slow molecules pass from B to A than fast ones pass from A to B in order to make B hotter at the same pressure. Indeed, by regulating the number of molecules passed in each direction, the demon could achieve a pressure difference instead of a temperature difference, or any combination of temperature and pressure differences (possibly including lower pressure on the higher temperature side, depending on the variance in the speeds of the molecules).
Maxwell's demon
Applications
Real-life versions of Maxwellian demons occur, but all such "real demons" have their entropy-lowering effects duly balanced by increase of entropy elsewhere. Molecular-sized mechanisms are no longer found only in biology; they are also the subject of the emerging field of nanotechnology. Single-atom traps used by particle physicists allow an experimenter to control the state of individual quanta in a way similar to Maxwell's demon. If hypothetical mirror matter exists, Zurab Silagadze proposes that demons can be envisaged, "which can act like perpetuum mobiles of the second kind: extract heat energy from only one reservoir, use it to do work and be isolated from the rest of ordinary world. Yet the Second Law is not violated because the demons pay their entropy cost in the hidden (mirror) sector of the world by emitting mirror photons." In 1962 lectures, to illustrate thermodynamics, physicist Richard Feynman analyzed a putative Maxwell's demon device, a tiny paddlewheel attached to a ratchet, showing why it cannot extract energy from molecular motion of a fluid at equilibrium. This Brownian ratchet is a popular teaching tool.
Experimental work
In the February 2007 issue of Nature, David Leigh, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, announced the creation of a nano-device based on Feynman's thought experiment. Leigh's device is able to drive a chemical system out of equilibrium, but it must be powered by an external source (light in this case) and therefore does not violate thermodynamics. Previously, other researchersWikipedia:Avoid weasel words created a ring-shaped molecule which could be placed on an axle connecting two sites, A and B. Particles from either site would bump into the ring and move it from end to end. If a large collection of these devices were placed in a system, half of the devices had the ring at site A and half at B, at any given moment in time. Leigh made a minor change to the axle so that if a light is shone on the device, the center of the axle will thicken, restricting the motion of the ring. It only keeps the ring from moving, however, if it is at A. Over time, therefore, the rings will be bumped from B to A and get stuck there, creating an imbalance in the system. In his experiments, Leigh was able to take a pot of "billions of these devices" from 50:50 equilibrium to a 70:30 imbalance within a few minutes. The March 2011 issue of Scientific American features an article by Professor Mark G. Raizen of the University of Texas, Austin which discusses the first realization of Maxwell's demon with gas phase particles, as originally envisioned by Maxwell. In 2005, Raizen and collaborators showed how to realize Maxwell's demon for an ensemble of dilute gas-phase atoms or molecules. The new concept is a one-way wall for atoms or molecules that allows them move in one direction, but not go back. The operation of the one-way wall relies on an irreversible atomic and molecular process of absorption of a photon at a specific wavelength, followed by spontaneous emission to a different internal state. The irreversible process is coupled to a conservative force created by magnetic fields and/or light. Raizen and collaborators proposed to use the one-way wall in order to reduce the entropy of an ensemble of atoms. In parallel, Gonzalo Muga and Andreas Ruschhaupt, independently developed a similar concept. Their "atom diode" was not proposed for cooling, but rather to regulate flow of atoms. The Raizen Group demonstrated significant cooling of atoms with the one-way wall in a series of experiments in 2008. Subsequently, the operation of a one-way wall for atoms was demonstrated by Daniel Steck and collaborators later in 2008. Their experiment was based on the 2005 scheme for the one-way wall, and was not used for cooling. The cooling method realized by the Raizen Group was called "Single-Photon Cooling," because only one photon on average is required in order to bring an atom to near-rest. This is in contrast to laser cooling which uses the momentum of the photon and requires a two-level cycling transition. In 2006 Raizen, Muga, and Ruschhaupt showed in a theoretical paper that as each atom crosses the one-way wall, it scatters one photon, and information is provided about the turning point and hence the energy of that particle. The
Maxwell's demon entropy increase of the radiation field scattered from a directional laser into a random direction is exactly balanced by the entropy reduction of the atoms as they are trapped with the one-way wall. Therefore, single-photon cooling is a physical realization of Maxwells Demon in the same sense envisioned by Leo Szilard in 1929. The importance of single photon cooling is that it provides a general method for cooling multi-level atoms or molecules. It circumvents the limitation of laser cooling which requires a two-level cycling transition, and hence is limited to a small set of atoms in the Periodic Table. The experimental realization of Maxwell's demon is a key step towards general control of atoms in gas phase. Beyond basic scientific research, these methods will enable efficient isotope separation for medicine and basic research, as well as controlling atoms in gas phase for nanoscale deposition on surfaces. This new, bottom-up, approach to nanoscience is called atomoscience and is enabled by the realization of Maxwell's demon. Regarding Landauer's principle, the minimum energy dissipated by deleting information was experimentally measured by Eric Lutz et al. in 2012. Although a demon could, in principle, observe the particle, save the result and act on it, deleting the result would necessarily dissipate heat and thus increase entropy. Without an infinite memory, the demon would eventually have to overwrite its previous results. Additionally, the deletion became more energy-efficient the slower it was, thus also requiring the demon to asymptotically approach zero processing speed.
As metaphor
Historian Henry Brooks Adams in his manuscript The Rule of Phase Applied to History attempted to use Maxwell's demon as a historical metaphor, though he misunderstood and misapplied the original principle.[3] Adams interpreted history as a process moving towards "equilibrium", but he saw militaristic nations (he felt Germany pre-eminent in this class) as tending to reverse this process, a Maxwell's demon of history. Adams made many attempts to respond to the criticism of his formulation from his scientific colleagues, but the work remained incomplete at Adams' death in 1918. It was only published posthumously.[4] Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu incorporated Maxwell's demon into his work, "Raisons Pratiques" as a metaphor for the socioeconomic inequality among students, as maintained by the school system, the economy, and families. The demon is mentioned several times in The Cyberiad, a series of short stories by the noted science fiction writer Stanisaw Lem. In the book the demon appears both in its original form and in a modified form where it uses its knowledge of all particles in the box in order to surmise general (but unfocused and random) facts about the rest of the universe.
Notes
[1] [2] [3] [4] Leff & Rex (2002), p. 370. Maxwell (1871), reprinted in Leff & Rex (1990) on p. 4. Cater (1947), pp. 640647; see also Daub (1970), reprinted in Leff & Rex (1990), pp. 3751. Adams (1919), p. 267.
References
Cater, H. D., ed. (1947). Henry Adams and his Friends. Boston. Daub, E. E. (1967). "Atomism and Thermodynamics". Isis 58 (3): 293303. doi: 10.1086/350264 (http://dx.doi. org/10.1086/350264). Leff, Harvey S. & Andrew F. Rex, ed. (1990). Maxwell's Demon: Entropy, Information, Computing. Bristol: Adam-Hilger. ISBN0-7503-0057-4. Leff, Harvey S. & Andrew F. Rex, ed. (2002). Maxwell's Demon 2: Entropy, Classical and Quantum Information, Computing. CRC Press. ISBN0-7503-0759-5. Adams, H. (1919). The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma. New York: Kessinger. ISBN1-4179-1598-6.
Maxwell's demon
External links
Bennett, C. H. (1987) "Demons, Engines and the Second Law", Scientific American, November, pp108-116 Binder, P.-M. (2008). "Reflections on a Wall of Light". Science 322 (5906): 13341335. doi: 10.1126/science.1166681 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1166681). Earman, J. and Norton, J. (1998). "Exorcist XIV: The Wrath of Maxwell's Demon. Part I. From Maxwell to Szilard" (http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/ExorcistXIV/Exorcist1.pdf) (PDF). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 29 (4): 435471. doi: 10.1016/S1355-2198(98)00023-9 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1355-2198(98)00023-9). Earman, J. and Norton, J. (1999). "Exorcist XIV: The Wrath of Maxwell's Demon. Part II. From Szilard to Landauer and Beyond" (http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/ExorcistXIV/Exorcist2.pdf) (PDF). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 30: 140. doi: 10.1016/S1355-2198(98) (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1355-2198(98)). Feynmann, R. P. et al. (1996). Feynman Lectures on Computation. Addison-Wesley. pp.148150. ISBN0-14-028451-6. Jordy, W. H. (1952). Henry Adams: Scientific Historian. New Haven. ISBN0-685-26683-4. Khan, Salman. "Maxwell's Demon" (http://khanexercises.appspot.com/video?v=aKRDvSZ-igA). Maroney, O. J. E. (2009) " "Information Processing and Thermodynamic Entropy (http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/information-entropy/)" The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Autumn 2009 Edition) Maxwell, J. C. (1871). Theory of Heat (http://www.archive.org/details/theoryofheat00maxwrich)., reprinted (2001) New York: Dover, ISBN 0-486-41735-2 Norton, J. (2005). "Eaters of the lotus: Landauer's principle and the return of Maxwell's demon" (http:// philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001729/02/Norton.pdf) (PDF). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 36 (2): 375411. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsb.2004.12.002 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsb.2004.12.002). Raizen, Mark G. (2011) "Demons, Entropy, and the Quest for Absolute Zero", Scientific American, March, pp54-59 Reaney, Patricia. "Scientists build nanomachine" (http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=116& art_id=qw1170340561317B216), Reuters, February 1, 2007 Rubi, J Miguel, " Does Nature Break the Second Law of Thermodynamics? (http://www.sciam.com/article. cfm?id=how-nature-breaks-the-second-law&sc=SA_20081020)"; Scientific American, October 2008 : Splasho (2008) - Historical development of Maxwell's demon (http://splasho.com/blog/essays/ maxwell-thermodynamics-meets-the-demon/) Weiss, Peter. "Breaking the Law - Can quantum mechanics + thermodynamics = perpetual motion?" (http://web. archive.org/web/20070621222301/http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20001007/bob9.asp), Science News, October 7, 2000
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