Thermally-driven quantum reservoir computing

arXiv:2611.07187v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Heat generation limits computation, classical and quantum, from single logic gates to entire data centers. However, an in principle limiting physical factor can sometimes be turned into a resource. In reservoir computing, energy dissipation is what gives a reservoir its fading memory. Here, we introduce a paradigm where the data injection itself is encoded on the time-dependent temperature of a thermal bath. We derive an exact expression for the nonlinear response of any fixed readout, and prove a rigorous memory-nonlinearity trade-off which turns out to be a structural necessity, rather than a tunable dynamical regime, since the same coupling that injects data also enforces equilibration.