TY - JOUR
T1 - Second Law based definition of passivity/activity of devices
AU - Sundqvist, Kyle M.
AU - Ferry, David K.
AU - Kish, Laszlo B.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2017/10/17
Y1 - 2017/10/17
N2 - Recently, our efforts to clarify the old question, if a memristor is a passive or active device [1], triggered debates between engineers, who have had advanced definitions of passivity/activity of devices, and physicists with significantly different views about this seemingly simple question. This debate triggered our efforts to test the well-known engineering concepts about passivity/activity in a deeper way, challenging them by statistical physics. It is shown that the advanced engineering definition of passivity/activity of devices is self-contradictory when a thermodynamical system executing Johnson–Nyquist noise is present. A new, statistical physical, self-consistent definition based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics is introduced. It is also shown that, in a system with uniform temperature distribution, any rectifier circuitry that can rectify thermal noise must contain an active circuit element, according to both the engineering and statistical physical definitions.
AB - Recently, our efforts to clarify the old question, if a memristor is a passive or active device [1], triggered debates between engineers, who have had advanced definitions of passivity/activity of devices, and physicists with significantly different views about this seemingly simple question. This debate triggered our efforts to test the well-known engineering concepts about passivity/activity in a deeper way, challenging them by statistical physics. It is shown that the advanced engineering definition of passivity/activity of devices is self-contradictory when a thermodynamical system executing Johnson–Nyquist noise is present. A new, statistical physical, self-consistent definition based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics is introduced. It is also shown that, in a system with uniform temperature distribution, any rectifier circuitry that can rectify thermal noise must contain an active circuit element, according to both the engineering and statistical physical definitions.
KW - Activity
KW - Passivity
KW - Second Law
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U2 - 10.1016/j.physleta.2017.08.039
DO - 10.1016/j.physleta.2017.08.039
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85028564726
SN - 0375-9601
VL - 381
SP - 3364
EP - 3368
JO - Physics Letters, Section A: General, Atomic and Solid State Physics
JF - Physics Letters, Section A: General, Atomic and Solid State Physics
IS - 39
ER -