Landauer's principle
E87719
Landauer's principle is a foundational concept in thermodynamics and information theory stating that erasing one bit of information in a computational process necessarily dissipates a minimum amount of heat, linking information processing to physical entropy.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Landauer's principle canonical | 5 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T736450 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Landauer's principle Context triple: [Maxwell's demon thought experiment, relatedConcept, Landauer's principle]
-
A.
Bekenstein bound
The Bekenstein bound is a theoretical limit in physics on the maximum amount of information or entropy that can be contained within a finite region of space with a given amount of energy.
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B.
Maxwell's demon thought experiment
Maxwell's demon thought experiment is a famous conceptual scenario in thermodynamics that imagines an intelligent being seemingly violating the second law by sorting fast and slow gas molecules without expending energy.
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C.
Shannon–Khinchin axioms
The Shannon–Khinchin axioms are a set of fundamental conditions that uniquely characterize Shannon entropy as the standard measure of information and uncertainty in probability theory and information theory.
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D.
Sackur–Tetrode equation
The Sackur–Tetrode equation is a fundamental formula in statistical mechanics that gives the absolute entropy of an ideal monatomic gas in terms of its volume, temperature, and particle number.
-
E.
H-theorem
The H-theorem is Boltzmann’s foundational result in statistical mechanics that explains the irreversible increase of entropy in a gas from time-reversible microscopic dynamics, providing a key link between mechanics and the second law of thermodynamics.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Landauer's principle Target entity description: Landauer's principle is a foundational concept in thermodynamics and information theory stating that erasing one bit of information in a computational process necessarily dissipates a minimum amount of heat, linking information processing to physical entropy.
-
A.
Bekenstein bound
The Bekenstein bound is a theoretical limit in physics on the maximum amount of information or entropy that can be contained within a finite region of space with a given amount of energy.
-
B.
Maxwell's demon thought experiment
Maxwell's demon thought experiment is a famous conceptual scenario in thermodynamics that imagines an intelligent being seemingly violating the second law by sorting fast and slow gas molecules without expending energy.
-
C.
Shannon–Khinchin axioms
The Shannon–Khinchin axioms are a set of fundamental conditions that uniquely characterize Shannon entropy as the standard measure of information and uncertainty in probability theory and information theory.
-
D.
Sackur–Tetrode equation
The Sackur–Tetrode equation is a fundamental formula in statistical mechanics that gives the absolute entropy of an ideal monatomic gas in terms of its volume, temperature, and particle number.
-
E.
H-theorem
The H-theorem is Boltzmann’s foundational result in statistical mechanics that explains the irreversible increase of entropy in a gas from time-reversible microscopic dynamics, providing a key link between mechanics and the second law of thermodynamics.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (46)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
information-theoretic principle
ⓘ
physical principle ⓘ thermodynamic principle ⓘ |
| appliesTo |
bit erasure
ⓘ
logically irreversible computation ⓘ overwriting of memory ⓘ reset-to-zero operation ⓘ |
| concerns |
energy cost of information processing
ⓘ
entropy production in information erasure ⓘ thermodynamic cost of computation ⓘ |
| coreClaim |
erasure of one bit of information has a minimum thermodynamic cost
ⓘ
information is physical ⓘ logically irreversible operations are necessarily accompanied by heat dissipation ⓘ |
| dependsOn |
Boltzmann constant
ⓘ
absolute temperature ⓘ |
| field |
computational physics
ⓘ
information theory ⓘ reversible computing ⓘ statistical mechanics ⓘ thermodynamics ⓘ |
| hasConsequence |
links logical irreversibility to physical irreversibility
ⓘ
sets lower bound on energy per logical operation involving erasure ⓘ |
| hasFormula | Q ≥ kT ln 2 per erased bit ⓘ |
| implies |
no computation can be completely dissipationless if it includes erasure
ⓘ
reversible computation can in principle avoid Landauer heat for logical operations ⓘ |
| minimumEntropyIncreasePerBit | k ln 2 ⓘ |
| minimumHeatPerBit | kT ln 2 ⓘ |
| motivated |
development of low-power computing limits
ⓘ
research in thermodynamics of computation ⓘ |
| namedAfter | Rolf Landauer ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 1961 ⓘ |
| publishedIn | IBM Journal of Research and Development ⓘ |
| relatedTo |
Bennett's logical reversibility
ⓘ
Boltzmann–Gibbs entropy in statistical mechanics ⓘ
surface form:
Boltzmann entropy
Shannon entropy ⓘ reversible computing ⓘ second law of thermodynamics ⓘ |
| relatesQuantity |
heat dissipation
ⓘ
information entropy ⓘ thermodynamic entropy ⓘ |
| statedBy | Rolf Landauer ⓘ |
| status | widely accepted in physics and information theory ⓘ |
| supports | physical limits of computation ⓘ |
| temperatureDependence | minimum heat cost is proportional to absolute temperature ⓘ |
| usedInArgument |
Maxwell's demon thought experiment
ⓘ
surface form:
Maxwell's demon resolution
Szilard engine analysis ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Landauer's principle Description of subject: Landauer's principle is a foundational concept in thermodynamics and information theory stating that erasing one bit of information in a computational process necessarily dissipates a minimum amount of heat, linking information processing to physical entropy.
Referenced by (5)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.