Hi all,
Next Tuesday's talk will be in HIT K52 at 5pm. It will be by Oscar (see below for details).
Cheers, Roger
Title: Using information to extract work - beyond thermodynamics.
Abstract: I am going to talk about a paper that has just been finished and is not yet on the arxiv. The paper deals with the relation between information and thermodynamic work. If one has a system with energy it is necessary to have some information about the system in order to extract useful work. We show how to use information to extract work in a concrete setting, and derive expressions for how much work one can extract given ones information. These derivations are done in the smooth entropy paradigm, and are therefore valid for finite numbers of particles. We conclude that ideas from information theory can be used to extend thermodynamics to the nano-scale.