Causal games of work extraction with indefinite causal order
Gianluca Francica
Abstract
An indefinite causal order, where the causes of events are not necessarily in past events, is predicted by the process matrix framework. A fundamental question is how these nonseparable causal structures can be related to the thermodynamic phenomena. Here, we approach this problem by considering the existence of two cooperating local Maxwell's demons which try to exploit the presence of global correlations and indefinite causal order to optimize the extraction of work. Thus we prove that it is possible to have a larger probability to lower the local energy to zero if causal inequalities are violated and that more average work can be extracted with respect to a definite causal order. However, for noninteracting parties, for the system considered the work extractable cannot be larger than the definite causal order bound.