Ohm's law for information revealed by a skyrmion Maxwell's demon
Abstract
Reducing the energy cost of computation-a pressing issue in the age of AI-requires a framework for circuit design based on information thermodynamics. By extending non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to information thermodynamics, it has been shown that a probability flow carrying information-hereinafter referred to as an 'information current'-is driven by its conjugate thermodynamic force, namely 'information affinity'. Since information affinity plays a role analogous to that of voltage in an electrical circuit, it is suggested that information transport also follows a linear response relationship analogous to Ohm's law. However, despite this theoretical prediction, experimentally establishing an Ohm-like constitutive relation for information transport remains an important unsolved problem. Here, we realise an information engine consisting of two magnetic skyrmions undergoing Brownian motion at room temperature. We demonstrate that the resulting information current is proportional to the information affinity generated by Maxwell's demon over a relatively wide range, establishing Ohm's law for information. Furthermore, we clarify that, in real information circuits, both Ohm's law for information and Kirchhoff's voltage law must be slightly modified to account for interactions between information carriers and the scattering of the information current.
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BibTeX
@misc{miki2026ohms,
title = {{Ohm's law for information revealed by a skyrmion Maxwell's demon}},
author = {Soma Miki and Yoshishige Suzuki and Ryo Ishikawa and Yuki Hibino and Shunya Morishita and Hiroto Imanishi and Keigo Adachi and Yoichi Shiota and Takayuki Nozaki and Minori Goto and Hikaru Nomura and Shigemi Mizukami and Eiiti Tamura},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.36955},
eprint = {2609.36955},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36955},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Ohm's law for information revealed by a skyrmion Maxwell's demon
AU - Soma Miki
AU - Yoshishige Suzuki
AU - Ryo Ishikawa
AU - Yuki Hibino
AU - Shunya Morishita
AU - Hiroto Imanishi
AU - Keigo Adachi
AU - Yoichi Shiota
AU - Takayuki Nozaki
AU - Minori Goto
AU - Hikaru Nomura
AU - Shigemi Mizukami
AU - Eiiti Tamura
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.36955
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36955
AB - Reducing the energy cost of computation-a pressing issue in the age of AI-requires a framework for circuit design based on information thermodynamics. By extending non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to information thermodynamics, it has been shown that a probability flow carrying information-hereinafter referred to as an 'information current'-is driven by its conjugate thermodynamic force, namely 'information affinity'. Since information affinity plays a role analogous to that of voltage in an electrical circuit, it is suggested that information transport also follows a linear response relationship analogous to Ohm's law. However, despite this theoretical prediction, experimentally establishing an Ohm-like constitutive relation for information transport remains an important unsolved problem. Here, we realise an information engine consisting of two magnetic skyrmions undergoing Brownian motion at room temperature. We demonstrate that the resulting information current is proportional to the information affinity generated by Maxwell's demon over a relatively wide range, establishing Ohm's law for information. Furthermore, we clarify that, in real information circuits, both Ohm's law for information and Kirchhoff's voltage law must be slightly modified to account for interactions between information carriers and the scattering of the information current.
ER -