TY  - Type of reference 
TI  - Limits of Landauer’s principle and of the second law of thermodynamics 
AU  - Jean Argouarc’h 
AB  - Since 1857, the second law of thermodynamics has faced the challenge of Maxwell’s imagined demon. The widely accepted response to this challenge suggests that the demon requires a bit of information to work, and according to Landauer’s principle, the erasure of this bit must offset the entropy reduction achieved by the demon. Recent experiments involving two-state physical systems subject to thermal fluctuations at the nanoscale have aimed to either prove Landauer’s principle or to demonstrate Szilard engines or Maxwell’s demons in practice. We wrote the equations and developed a numerical model to simulate the evolution of these systems. The results highlight the distinction between thermodynamic entropy and information entropy. They demonstrate that Landauer’s principle has a limited range of applicability and that, using a two-state memory, it is possible to eliminate a small amount of entropy without expending energy—challenging the second law of thermodynamics at the nanoscale. 
DO  - 10.21494/ISTE.OP.2026.1414 
JF  - Entropy: Thermodynamics – Energy – Environment – Economy  
KW  - entropy, information, Landauer’s principle, Maxwell’s demon, second law of thermodynamics, Szilard engine, entropie, information, principe de Landauer, démon de Maxwell, second principe de la thermodynamique, machine de Szilard,  
L1  - https://www.openscience.fr/IMG/pdf/iste_entropie26v7n1_1_en.pdf 
LA  - en 
PB  - ISTE OpenScience 
DA  - 2026/02/9 
SN  - 2634-1476 
TT  - Limites du principe de Landauer et du second principe de la thermodynamique 
UR  - https://www.openscience.fr/Limits-of-Landauer-s-principle-and-of-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics 
IS  - Issue 1 
VL  - 7 
ER  -