Seminar by David Sivak

As part of the seminar series for this project, a seminar by David Sivak (Simon Fraser University) will be held at the University of Tokyo, Hongo Campus. The details are as follows.

Speaker: David Sivak (Simon Fraser University)
Date：2nd July [7/2] (Tue.): 13:00-
Place：In-person: Room 413, Science Building No.1, Hongo Campus, the Univ.
of Tokyo

Title: Information arbitrage in molecular machines
Abstract: Heat engines and information engines have each historically
served as motivating examples for the development of thermodynamics. While
these are typically thought of as two separate kinds of machines, recent
empirical studies of specific systems have hinted at possible connections.
Inspired by molecular machines in the cellular environment, which in many
cases have separate components in contact with distinct sources of
fluctuations, we study bipartite heat engines and show that they can only
produce net output work by acting as information engines. Conversely,
information engines can only extract more work than the work consumed to
power them if they have access to different sources of fluctuations, i.e.,
act as heat engines. We illustrate these findings through a close analogy
to economic arbitrage, a cyclically controlled 2D ideal gas and inference
of information flows in light-harvesting biomolecular machines. Our results
suggest design principles for both heat engines and information engines at
the nanoscale, and ultimately imply constraints on how free-energy
transduction is carried out within molecular machines.