University of Barcelona researchers develop new variant of Maxwell's demon at nanoscale

Maxwell's demon is a machine proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in 1897. The hypothetical machine would use thermal fluctuations to obtain energy, apparently violating the second principle of thermodynamics. Now, researchers of the University of Barcelona have presented the first theoretical and experimental solution of a continuous version of Maxwell's demon in a single molecule system. The results, published in the journal Nature Physics, can have applications in other fields, such as biological and quantum systems.