Extending the Landauer limit: bias dependent work cost of erasure in a quantum dot system

Landauer erasure places a fundamental lower bound on the energy required to erase one bit of information in the presence of a thermal bath. Quantum dots, where the presence or absence of an electron can represent a binary digit, offer a promising platform for studying Landauer erasure. Recent work has extended Landauer's original bound by establishing lower limits on the work cost of erasure for a single quantum dot system coupled to thermal baths at different temperatures and subject to an applied bias. Using a quantum dot defined within a two-dimensional electron gas and charge sensing reflectometry to track its real-time occupation, we measure how an applied bias impacts the work cost of erasure. Our findings align with theoretical predictions, confirming that the work cost of erasure stays within the expected bounds. Specifically, we observe that the work cost tends toward the Landauer limit as the bias across the quantum dot goes to zero. These results provide valuable insights into information processing at the nanoscale and have implications for the development of energy-efficient quantum devices.