Temperature dependence of heat dissipation during Landauer erasure of nanomagnets

In order to adhere to the well-known kT ln(2) limit, heat dissipation during Landauer erasure of a memory bit must scale linearly with temperature. We demonstrate a technique for measuring the temperature dependent energy dissipation of a nanomagnet during the Landauer erasure operation. A magneto-optical Kerr effect magnetometer configured to measure the in-plane magnetization of arrays of magnetic nanostructures produces hysteresis curves, the areas of which are proportional to heat dissipation. This result experimentally verifies a key aspect of the fundamental thermodynamic limits of computation in an integrated system.