Winning strategies of a gambling demon in a Brownian particle under a squeezing potential

Abstract

The ability of a gambling demon to extract work with a prescribed stopping threshold of cumulative work is analyzed theoretically and realized experimentally in the paradigm system of a Brownian particle in a time-dependent squeezing potential. The mechanism for the demon to beat the second law of thermodynamics (having a negative dissipative work or win) is sorted out in detail by analyzing the statistics of the stopped trajectories. The obtained insights, together with the associated nonequilibrium properties, further lead to improved strategies of the time-dependent stopping threshold to enhance the winning profit, which is confirmed experimentally.