{"id":146802,"date":"2022-09-22T03:24:09","date_gmt":"2022-09-22T08:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/information-as-thermodynamic-fuel"},"modified":"2022-09-22T03:24:09","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T08:24:09","slug":"information-as-thermodynamic-fuel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/information-as-thermodynamic-fuel","title":{"rendered":"Information as Thermodynamic Fuel"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

An information engine uses information to convert heat into useful energy. Such an engine can be made, for example, from a heavy bead in an optical trap. A bead engine operates using thermal noise. When noise fluctuations raise the bead vertically, the trap is also lifted. This change increases the average height of the bead, and the engine produces energy. No work is done to cause this change; rather, the potential energy is extracted from information. However, measurement noise\u2014whose origin is intrinsic to the system probing the bead\u2019s position\u2014can degrade the engine\u2019s efficiency, as it can add uncertainty to the measurement, which can lead to incorrect feedback decisions by the algorithm that operates the engine. Now Tushar Saha and colleagues at Simon Fraser University in Canada have developed an algorithm that doesn\u2019t suffer from these errors, allowing for efficient operation of an information engine even when there is high measurement noise [1<\/a>].<\/p>\n

To date, most information engines have operated using feedback algorithms that consider only the most recent bead-position observation. In such a system, when the engine\u2019s signal-to-noise ratio falls below a certain value, the engine stops working.<\/p>\n

To overcome this problem, Saha and colleagues instead use a \u201cfiltering\u201d algorithm that replaces the most recent bead measurement with a so-called Bayesian estimate. This estimate accounts for both measurement noise and delay in the device\u2019s feedback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An information engine uses information to convert heat into useful energy. Such an engine can be made, for example, from a heavy bead in an optical trap. A bead engine operates using thermal noise. When noise fluctuations raise the bead vertically, the trap is also lifted. This change increases the average height of the bead, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-information-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}