Previous research has consistently affirmed that Maxwell's demon must adhere to the second law of thermodynamics. Yet, the unresolved question remains whether the profitability and indispensability of information, which we routinely take for granted, are based on constraints stemming from physical laws. This paper reports a novel generalization of the second law of thermodynamics, answering that when internal correlations, i.e., correlations between subsystems of resource, are intended to be exploited, information is indispensable to extract free energy. Furthermore, the internal correlations, which can grow linearly with the number of subsystems in the resource, allow for control with information that yields significant gains, dwarfing the negligible operational costs in the thermodynamic limit. Thus, the generalized second law presented herein can be interpreted as a fundamental physical principle that ensures the benefit and inevitability of information processing in thermodynamics.

翻译：先前的研究一致确认，麦克斯韦妖必须遵守热力学第二定律。然而，一个尚未解决的问题是，我们通常视为理所当然的信息的收益性和不可或缺性，是否基于物理定律所施加的约束。本文报告了热力学第二定律的一个新的推广形式，指出当内部关联（即资源子系统之间的关联）被意图利用时，信息对于提取自由能是不可或缺的。此外，内部关联能够随资源中子系统的数量线性增长，这使得利用信息进行控制能够产生显著的收益，在热力学极限下使得微不足道的操作成本相形见绌。因此，本文提出的广义第二定律可被解释为一条基本物理原理，它确保了信息处理在热力学中的收益性与必然性。