Maxwell's Demon Observing Creation of a Molecular Vibration

Quantum correlations and associated quantum information concepts (e. g. quantum discord, entanglement, quantum Maxwell's demon) provide novel insights in various quantum-information processing tasks, quantum-thermodynamics processes, open-system dynamics, quantum molecular dynamics, and general many-body physics. We investigate a new effect of correlations accompanying collision of two quantum systems A and B, the latter being part of a larger (interacting) system B + D. In contrast to the usual case of a classical ‘environment’ or ‘demon’ (which can have only classical correlations with A + B during and after the collision), the quantum case exhibits striking new features. Here, in the frame of incoherent inelastic neutron scattering (INS) and vibrational dynamics of molecules, we report experimental evidence of a new phenomenon: quantum deficit of momentum transfer in an elementary neutron–molecule collision, in particular, in INS from single H₂O molecules confined in channels with sub-nanometer diameter. The INS findings are in clear contrast to conventional theoretical expectations, but are naturally (albeit qualitative) interpreted in the frame of modern theory of quantumness of correlations, thus also proposing a new operational meaning of quantum discord and related measures.