First and Second Laws of Information Processing in Maxwellian Ratchets

Autonomous Maxwellian ratchets are Maxwellian demons which explicitly leverage correlation among information-bearing degrees of freedom to exchange thermodynamic resources. For example, previous "information processing Second Laws" (IPSLs) show that we can extract heat from a single thermal environment and convert it to work, at the cost of modifying values in a data tape.

Previous results required detailed balance in the stochastic dynamics—effectively requiring equilibrium steady states and precluding application to a variety of complex biological and biophysical processes. We therefore extend and tighten previous IPSLs for nonequilbrium steady-state systems, and show how to derive both old and new IPSLs from a stricter "information processing First Law" and the integral fluctaution theorems of stochastic thermodynamics.

We close by applying these new laws to an example ratchet model designed to violate detailed balance in its effective dynamics. This explicates the effects of nonequilibirum steady states on ratchet functionality—and by extension, on how a large class of complex systems exchange energy and information to function.