Quantum to classical transition in an information ratchet

Abstract

Recent years have seen a flurry of research activity in the study of minimal and autonomous information ratchets. However, the existing classical and quantum models are somewhat hard to compare, and, hence, quantifying possible quantum supremacy in information ratchets has been elusive. We propose a first step towards filling this void between quantum and classical ratchets by introducing a new model with continuous variables -- a quantum particle in a box coupled to a stream of qubits. The dynamics is solved exactly, and we analyze the quantum to classical transition in terms of a natural time scale parameter for the model.