Seminar :: January 24 :: Erez Aghion

Tale of the Thermodynamic Speed Demon

Abstract:
Maxwell’s demon is a classic thought experiment challenging the statistical origins of the second law of thermodynamics. For over 150 years, it has sharpened our understanding of the links between work, entropy and dissipation, and the thermal cost of keeping information.
In recent years, an important physical speed limit has been discovered, where  the Fisher information constrains the maximal energy dissipation rate of any system driven away from equilibrium.
Here, we introduce a new demon that breaks this speed limit. Observing two chambers, the demon sorts driven particles by their diffusive speed. This sorting creates demonic gradients in heat release and the delivery of power to the system, and in the process violates the Fisher bound. As Maxwell's demon reincarnate, the speed demon not only sharpens our understanding of a recently discovered physical law but also opens broad paths for new applications beyond thermodynamics, in stochastic control.

Biographical sketch:
Erez Aghion completed his PhD in physics in 2019, in Bar-Ilan University, Israel, under the supervision of Prof. Eli Barkai. His thesis focused on anomalous diffusion and thermodynamics far from equilibrium. In the years 2019 - 2021, Erez worked as a postdoc researcher in Max-Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany, in the group of Prof. Holger Kantz. There, he developed methods for uncovering the origins of anomalous diffusion in empirical data: from the small scale of proteins diffusing inside cells to the large scale of migrating bird paths. Since 2021, during his second postdoc position with Prof. Jason Green at the University of Massachusetts Boston and continuing to this day, Erez has been developing methods to optimize the speed and efficiency of nonequilibrium complex systems.