Physics
Physics news
Developments at the frontier of physical reversibility — where the thermodynamics of information meets the laboratory. The ten most recent stories are below — browse the full archive by year.
Articles
A universal recipe for extracting work without knowing the state
A 2026 result builds a single state-independent quantum process that still extracts work equal to the free energy of an unknown state, near the reversible bound.
PhysicsReal memory cells reveal a thermodynamic limit stricter than Landauer’s
Single-electron-resolved measurements on silicon DRAM showed bit erasure never reaches the Landauer bound, exposing a tighter, practically relevant limit on erasure energetics.
PhysicsA single-qubit engine amplifies microwaves using only quantum measurement
A superconducting qubit acts as a quantum Maxwell demon, turning the backaction energy of repeated measurements into amplified microwave pulses with no hot thermal source.
PhysicsQuantum controls can stretch, blur and even reverse the arrow of time
NIST-led theorists devised feedback protocols that suppress or invert the thermodynamic arrow of time in quantum systems, engineering trajectories that look time-reversed.
PhysicsAn information engine does better by harnessing sideways thermal fluctuations
Adding transverse degrees of freedom lets a feedback-driven Brownian engine extract more directed motion from thermal noise, improving information-engine performance.
PhysicsA quantum-dot Szilard engine puts fluctuation theorems to the experimental test
A single-electron Szilard engine verified fluctuation theorems and thermodynamic uncertainty relations, probing which measure best captures information’s thermodynamic value.
PhysicsPhysicists observe a new form of temporal order: the time rondeau crystal
A diamond-spin experiment revealed a phase combining long-range order in time with controllable randomness, expanding the catalogue of broken time-translation symmetry.
PhysicsA clock's precision is set fundamentally by how often it ticks
A new clock uncertainty relation bounds how accurately any sequence of random events can tell time, tightening the link between timekeeping and dissipation.
PhysicsA quantum-dot information engine extracts optimal work across two decades of speed
A single-electron Szilard engine in germanium ran at maximum efficiency from slow to fast driving, mapping the trade-off between power and its fluctuations.
PhysicsLandauer's principle tested in the quantum many-body regime
A one-dimensional quantum field simulator made from ultracold Bose gases probes the information–heat bound in a complex, out-of-equilibrium quantum system.