title: Landauer's principle in the quantum regime.
abstract: We demonstrate the validity of Landauer's erasure principle in the strong coupling quantum regime by treating the system-reservoir interaction in a thermodynamic way. We show that the initial coupling to the reservoir modifies both the energy and the entropy of the system, and provide explicit expressions for the latter for a damped quantum harmonic oscillator. These contributions are related to the Hamiltonian of mean force and dominate in the strong damping limit. They need therefore to be fully taken into account in any low temperature thermodynamic analysis of quantum systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Augsburg, D-86135 Augsburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Stefanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hilt
authors.forename: Saroosh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shabbir
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Anders
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lutz