Information and Thermodynamics: Fast and Precise Approach to Landauer's Bound in an Underdamped Micromechanical Oscillator

The Landauer principle states that at least kBTln2 of energy is required to erase a 1-bit memory, with kBT the thermal energy of the system. We study the effects of inertia on this bound using as one-bit memory an underdamped micromechanical oscillator confined in a double-well potential created by a feedback loop. The potential barrier is precisely tunable in the few kBT range. We measure, within the stochastic thermodynamic framework, the work and the heat of the erasure protocol. We demonstrate experimentally and theoretically that, in this underdamped system, the Landauer bound is reached with a 1% uncertainty, with protocols as short as 100 ms.