Maxwell's demon and Smoluchowski's trap door

Abstract

A simulation has been performed to reveal the detailed dynamics and statistical behavior of a Maxwell demon of the simplest kind, a trap door held over by a spring inside a box filled with gas molecules. The role of such a demon can be controlled by tuning Smoluchowski's fluctuations. When the demon is in thermal equilibrium with the rest of the system, it fails to function as designed, and when it is separately subjected to a thermal bath with a different temperature, it creates a temperature or density gradient between the two chambers of the box it divides. As a Maxwell demon, the trap-door device creates more readily a density gradient than that of temperature. © 2007 The American Physical Society.