Landauer's principle

English

Etymology

Named after German-American physicist Rolf Landauer (1927–1999), who proposed it in 1961.

Proper noun

Landauer's principle

1. (physics, information theory) The principle that any logically irreversible manipulation of information must entail an increase in the entropy of the information-processing apparatus or its environment.
   • 2017, Momčilo Gavrilov, Experiments on the Thermodynamics of Information Processing, Springer, page 72:

     Landauer's principle remained untested for over fifty years.

   • 2018, Michael P. Frank, Physical Foundations of Landauer's Principle, Jarkko Kari, Irek Ulidowski (editors), Reversible Computation: 10th International Conference, Proceedings, Springer, LNCS, page 5,

     Thus, the usual arguments for Landauer's Principle and reversible computing that do not address this case are overly simplistic; later, we will discuss how to generalize and repair them.

   • 2022, Philipp Strasberg, Quantum Stochastic Thermodynamics, Oxford University Press, page 53:

     Equation (2.27) is often referred to as Landauer's principle.
     In retrospect, one could object that Landauer's principle is a mere tautology. If one accepts the notion of Shannon entropy as non-equilibrium thermodynamic entropy, then Landauer's principle is nothing but the second law (2.24) of non-equilibrium thermodynamics applied to a special situation.

Derived terms

• Landauer's erasure principle

Translations

principle that an irreversible manipulation of information always entails an increase in entropy

• French: please add this translation if you can
• German: Landauer-Prinzip n
• Italian: please add this translation if you can

See also

• Landauer limit

Further reading

• Limits of computation on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Physics of computation on Wikipedia.Wikipedia