Power of an optical Maxwell's demon in the presence of photon-number correlations

Abstract

We study how correlations affect the performance of the simulator of a Maxwell's demon demonstrated in a recent optical experiment [M. D. Vidrighin, O. Dahlsten, M. Barbieri, M. S. Kim, V. Vedral, and I. A. Walmsley, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 050401 (2016)]. The power of the demon is found to be enhanced or hindered, depending on the nature of the correlation, in close analogy to the situation faced by a thermal demon.