Universal features in the energetics of symmetry breaking

A breaking of symmetry involves an abrupt change in the set of microstates a system can explore. This change has unavoidable thermodynamic implications: a shrinkage of the microstate set results in an entropy decrease, which eventually needs to be compensated by heat dissipation and hence requires work. On the other hand, in a spontaneous symmetry breaking, the available phase-space volume changes without the need for work, yielding an apparent entropy decrease. Here we show that this entropy decrease is a key ingredient of a Szilard engine and Landauer’s principle, and perform a direct measurement of the entropy change along symmetry-breaking transitions for a Brownian particle subject to a bistable potential realized through two optical traps. The experiment confirms theoretical results based on fluctuation theorems, enables the construction of a Szilard engine extracting energy from a single thermal bath, and shows that a signature of a symmetry breaking in a system’s energetics is observable.