Invalidity of the Landauer inequality for information erasure in the quantum regime

A known aspect of the Clausius inequality is that an equilibrium system subjected to a squeezingdS < 0 of its entropy must release at least an amount |d¯Q| = T|dS| of heat. This serves as a basisfor the Landauer principle, which puts a lower bound T ln2 for the heat generated by erasure of onebit of information. Here we show that in the world of quantum entanglement this law is broken,suggesting that quantum carriers of information can be more efficient than assumed so far.