At that time, people had no idea about quantum theory. The roots of the problem lie in the fact that thermodynamics was formulated in the 19th century for classical objects - for steam engines, refrigerators or glowing pieces of coal. But if deleting information and cooling to absolute zero are the same thing - how does that fit together? Thermodynamics, however, says that you need an infinite amount of energy to cool anything down exactly to absolute zero. Marcus Huber from the Atomic Institute of TU Wien. It says that a very specific minimum amount of energy is required to delete one bit of information,' explains Prof. But the two seem to contradict each other: 'From information theory, we know the so-called Landauer principle. From a quantum physics point of view, cooling and deleting information are thus closely related.Īt this point, two important physical theories meet: Information theory and thermodynamics. Everything that may have happened to the particle before is perfectly erased. The particles then no longer contain any information about what state they were in before. When quantum particles reach absolute zero, their state is precisely known: They are guaranteed to be in the state with the lowest energy.

Information and thermodynamics: an apparent contradiction And only if you have an infinite amount of one of these ingredients can you reach absolute zero. But for any conceivable recipe for it, you need three ingredients: Energy, time and complexity. A research team at TU Wien (Vienna) has now investigated the question: How can this law be reconciled with the rules of quantum physics? They succeeded in developing a 'quantum version' of the third law of thermodynamics: Theoretically, absolute zero is attainable.

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