A generalized collision model is developed to investigate coherent charging a single quantum battery by repeated interactions with many-atom large spins, where collective atom operators are adopted and the battery is modeled by a uniform energy ladder. For an initially empty battery, we derive analytical results of the average number of excitations and hence the charging power in the short-time limit. Our analytical results show that a faster charging and an increased amount of the power in the coherent protocol uniquely arise from the phase coherence of the atoms. Finally, we show that the charging power defined by the so-called ergotropy almost follows our analytical result, due to a nearly pure state of the battery in the short-time limit.
A generalized collision model is developed to investigate coherent charging a single quantum battery by repeated interactions with many-atom large spins, where collective atom operators are adopted and the battery is modeled by a uniform energy ladder. For an initially empty battery, we derive analytical results of the average number of excitations and hence the charging power in the short-time limit. Our analytical results show that a faster charging and an increased amount of the power in the coherent protocol uniquely arise from the phase coherence of the atoms. Finally, we show that the charging power defined by the so-called ergotropy almost follows our analytical result, due to a nearly pure state of the battery in the short-time limit.
We present a collision model for the charging of a quantum battery by identical nonequilibrium qubit units. When the units are prepared in a mixture of energy eigenstates, the energy gain in the battery can be described by a classical random walk, where both average energy and variance grow linearly with time. Conversely, when the qubits contain quantum coherence, interference effects buildup in the battery and lead to a faster spreading of the energy distribution, reminiscent of a quantum random walk. This can be exploited for faster and more efficient charging of a battery initialized in the ground state. Specifically, we show that coherent protocols can yield higher charging power than any possible incoherent strategy, demonstrating a quantum speed-up at the level of a single battery. Finally, we characterize the amount of extractable work from the battery through the notion of ergotropy.
An open quantum battery (QB) model of a single qubit system charging in a coherent auxiliary bath (CAB) consisting of a series of independent coherent ancillae is considered. According to the collision charging protocol we derive a quantum master equation and obtain the analytical solution of QB in a steady state. We find that the full charging capacity (or the maximal extractable work (MEW)) of QB, in the weak QB-ancilla coupling limit, is positively correlated with the coherence magnitude of ancilla. Combining with the numerical simulations we compare with the charging properties of QB at finite coupling strength, such as the MEW, average charging power and the charging efficiency, when considering the bath to be a thermal auxiliary bath (TAB) and a CAB, respectively. We find that when the QB with CAB, in the weak coupling regime, is in fully charging, both its capacity and charging efficiency can go beyond its classical counterpart, and they increase with the increase of coherence magnitude of ancilla. In addition, the MEW of QB in the regime of relative strong coupling and strong coherent magnitude shows the oscillatory behavior with the charging time increasing, and the first peak value can even be larger than the full charging MEW of QB. This also leads to a much larger average charging power than that of QB with TAB in a short-time charging process. These features suggest that with the help of quantum coherence of CAB it becomes feasible to switch the charging schemes between the long-time slow charging protocol with large capacity and high efficiency and the short-time rapid charging protocol with highly charging power only by adjusting the coupling strength of QB-ancilla. This work clearly demonstrates that the quantum coherence of bath can not only serve as the role of “fuel” of QB to be utilized to improve the QB’s charging performance but also provide an alternative way to integrate the different charging protocols into a single QB.
A quantum battery is a temporary energy-storage system. We construct a quantum battery model of an N-spin chain with nearest-neighbor hopping interaction and investigate the quantum battery's charging process. We obtain the maximum energy in the quantum battery charged by a coherent cavity driving field or a thermal heat bath. We confirm that for a finite-length spin chain, thermal charging results in a nonzero ergotropy, contradicting a previous result: An incoherent heat source cannot charge a single-spin quantum battery. The nearest-neighbor hopping interaction induces energy-band splitting, enhancing the energy storage and the ergotropy of the quantum battery. We find a critical point in the energy and ergotropy resulting from the ground-state quantum phase transition after which the energy significantly enhances. Finally, we also find that disorder increases the energy of the quantum battery.
In this work, we investigate the autonomous charging process of a quantum battery coupled to a structured reservoir composed of two qubits, each locally coupled to its own bosonic thermal bath. Moreover, the reservoir interacts with a charger-battery architecture through three configurations: (I) direct coupling between reservoir qubits and battery; (II) collective coupling among the reservoir qubits, charger, and battery; and (III) a collective coupling between the reservoir qubits and charger together with a local charger-battery interaction. However, by using incoherent and coherent initial states, we analyze the stored energy, ergotropy, and charging power of the battery, and derive upper and lower bounds on the extractable work in terms of the free energy of coherence and the correlations exchanged between subsystems. Our results show that global and local coherences, as well as total correlations, act as quantum resources that enhance autonomous charging. Additionally, we demonstrate that the free energy stored in the quantum battery splits into contributions from coherence and correlations, providing numerical evidence that supports the derived ergotropy bounds. Importantly, this work highlights how structured reservoirs enable autonomous and resource-enhanced quantum battery operation.
ABSTRACT We investigate a quantum battery within an open quantum system, in which a harmonic oscillator acts as the charger and two‐level atoms serve as battery cells. This model accounts for the dissipative effects arising from the coupling between both the charger and battery cells with the environment. By analyzing the time evolution of the battery energy, charging power, ergotropy, and logarithmic negativity, we systematically examine the influence of the number of battery cells and environmental dissipation on battery performance. Our results show that increasing significantly enhances the charging power, exhibiting a collective enhancement effect. Both the atomic number and environmental dissipation strongly affect the ergotropy per atom, but their influences are distinct.
Can collective quantum effects make a difference in a meaningful thermodynamic operation? Focusing on energy storage and batteries, we demonstrate that quantum mechanics can lead to an enhancement in the amount of work deposited per unit time, i.e., the charging power, when N batteries are charged collectively. We first derive analytic upper bounds for the collective quantum advantage in charging power for two choices of constraints on the charging Hamiltonian. We then demonstrate that even in the absence of quantum entanglement this advantage can be extensive. For our main result, we provide an upper bound to the achievable quantum advantage when the interaction order is restricted; i.e., at most k batteries are interacting. This constitutes a fundamental limit on the advantage offered by quantum technologies over their classical counterparts.