Molecular Dynamics Simulations and the Landauer’s Principle

Abstract

Landauer’s principle is a fundamental link between thermodynamics and information theory, which implies that the erasure of information comes at an energetic price. In the present contribution we analyze to what extend the usual molecular dynamics (MD) simulation formalism can handle the Landauer’s bound kBT ln 2 in the simplest case of one particle treated classically. The erasure of one bit of information is performed by adiabatically varying the shape of a bistable potential in a full cycle. We will highlight the inadequacy of either the microcanonical or canonical ensemble treatments currently employed in MD simulations and propose potential solutions.