Abstract
Abstract
Landauer’s principle states that erasing a bit of information at fixed temperature T costs at least
k
B
T
ln
2
units of work. Here we investigate erasure at varying temperature, to which Landauer’s result does not apply. We formulate bit erasure as a stochastic nonequilibrium process involving a compression of configuration space, with physical and logical states associated in a symmetric way. Erasure starts and ends at temperature T, but temperature can otherwise vary with time in an arbitrary way. Defined in this way, erasure is governed by a set of nonequilibrium fluctuation relations that show that varying-temperature erasure can done with less work than
k
B
T
ln
2
. As a result, erasure and the complementary process of bit randomization can be combined to form a work-producing engine cycle.