The third law of thermodynamics can be phrased as an impossibility of cooling any physical system to absolute zero temperature. The projection postulate of quantum mechanics, however, predicts pure post-measurement states in idealised settings. We show how a self-contained treatment connects the two concepts and extends the impossibility of cooling to the impossibility of perfect measurements or Landauer erasure with finite thermodynamic resources.


Seminar, July 9, 2019, 14:30. ICFO’s Seminar Room

Hosted by Prof. Antonio Acín