  We demonstrate the validity of Landauer's erasure principle in the strong
coupling quantum regime by treating the system-reservoir interaction in a
consistent way. We show that the initial coupling to the reservoir modifies
both energy and entropy of the system and provide explicit expressions for the
latter in the case of a damped quantum harmonic oscillator. These contributions
are related to the Hamiltonian of mean force and dominate in the strong damping
limit. They need therefore to be fully taken into account in any
low-temperature thermodynamic analysis of quantum systems.
