Energy Cost of Controlling Mesoscopic Quantum Systems

Jordan M. Horowitz and Kurt Jacobs

Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 130501 – Published 25 September 2015

Abstract

We determine the minimum energy required to control the evolution of any mesoscopic quantum system in the presence of arbitrary Markovian noise processes. This result provides the mesoscopic equivalent of the fundamental cost of refrigeration, sets the minimum power consumption of mesoscopic devices that operate out of equilibrium, and allows one to calculate the efficiency of any control protocol, whether it be open-loop or feedback control. As examples, we calculate the energy cost of maintaining a qubit in the ground state and the efficiency of resolved-sideband cooling of nano-mechanical resonators, and discuss the energy cost of quantum information processing.

Received 5 May 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.130501

Authors & Affiliations

Jordan M. Horowitz¹ and Kurt Jacobs^1,2,3

¹Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts at Boston, Boston, Massachusetts 02125, USA
²U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Computational and Information Sciences Directorate, Adelphi, Maryland 20783, USA
³Hearne Institute for Theoretical Physics, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803, USA