Thermodynamics of multiple Maxwell demons

Abstract

In many assembly line processes like metabolic and signaling networks in biological systems, the products of the first enzyme are the reactant for the next enzyme in the network. Working of multiple machines leads to efficient utilization of resources. Motivated by this, we investigate if multiple Maxwell demons lead to more efficient information processing. We study the phase space of multiple demons acting on an information tape based on the model of Mandal and Jarzynski [1, 2]. Their model is analytically solvable and the phase space of the device has three regions: engine, where work is delivered by writing information to the tape, erasure, where work is performed on the device to erase information on the tape, and dud, when work is performed and, at the same time, the information is written to the tape. For identical demons, we find that the erasure region increases at the expense of the dud region, while the information engine region does not change appreciably. The efficiency of the multiple demon device increases with the number of demons in the device and saturates to the equilibrium (maximum) efficiency even at short cycle times for very large numbers of demons. By investigating a device with non-identical demons acting on a tape, we identify the demon parameters that control the different regions of the phase space. Our model is well suited to study information processing in assembly line systems.