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arXiv:2308.16086 · Physical Review A

Minimal time required to charge a quantum system

Ju-Yeon Gyhm, Dario Rosa, Dominik Šafránek

Published Feb 15, 2024• 19 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We introduce a quantum charging distance as the minimal time that it takes to reach one state (charged state) from another state (depleted state) via a unitary evolution, assuming limits on the resources invested into the driving Hamiltonian. For pure states it is equal to the Bures angle, while for mixed states its computation leads to an optimization problem. Thus, we also derive easily computable bounds on this quantity. The charging distance tightens the known bound on the mean charging power of a quantum battery, it quantifies the quantum charging advantage, and it leads to an always achievable quantum speed limit. In contrast with other similar quantities, the charging distance does not depend on the eigenvalues of the density matrix, it depends only on the corresponding eigenspaces. This research formalizes and interprets quantum charging in a geometric way, and provides a measurable quantity that one can optimize to maximize the speed of charging of future quantum batteries.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.109.022607

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We introduce a quantum charging distance as the minimal time that it takes to reach one state (charged state) from another state (depleted state) via a unitary evolution, assuming limits on the resources invested into the driving Hamiltonian. For pure states it is equal to the Bures angle, while for mixed states its computation leads to an optimization problem. Thus, we also derive easily computable bounds on this quantity. The charging distance tightens the known bound on the mean charging power of a quantum battery, it quantifies the quantum charging advantage, and it leads to an always achievable quantum speed limit. In contrast with other similar quantities, the charging distance does not depend on the eigenvalues of the density matrix, it depends only on the corresponding eigenspaces. This research formalizes and interprets quantum charging in a geometric way, and provides a measurable quantity that one can optimize to maximize the speed of charging of future quantum batteries.
We establish a general implementation-independent approach to assess the potential advantage of using highly entangled quantum states between the initial and final states of the charging protocol to enhance the maximum charging power of quantum batteries. It is shown that the impact of entanglement on power can be separated from both the global quantum speed limit associated with an optimal choice of driving Hamiltonian and the energy gap of the batteries. We then demonstrate that the quantum state advantage of battery charging, defined as the power obtainable for given quantum speed limit and battery energy gap, is not an entanglement monotone. A striking example we provide is that, counterintuitively, independent thermalization of the local batteries, completely destroying any entanglement, can lead to larger charging power than that of the initial maximally entangled state. Highly entangled states can thus also be potentially disadvantageous when compared to product states. We also demonstrate that taking the considerable effort of producing highly entangled states, such as W or k-locally entangled states, is not sufficient to obtain quantum-enhanced scaling behavior with the number of battery cells. Finally, we perform an explicit computation for a Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev battery charger to demonstrate that the quantum state advantage allows the instantaneous power to exceed its classical bound.
In general, quantum systems most likely undergo open-system dynamics due to their smallness and sensitivity. Energy storage devices, so-called quantum batteries, are not excluded from this phenomenon. Here, we study fundamental bounds on the power of open quantum batteries from the geometric point of view. By defining an activity operator, a tight upper bound on the charging power is derived for the open quantum batteries in terms of the fluctuations of the activity operator and the quantum Fisher information. The variance of the activity operator may be interpreted as a generalized thermodynamic force, while the quantum Fisher information describes the speed of evolution in the state space of the battery. The thermodynamic interpretation of the upper bound is discussed in detail. As an example, a model for the battery, taking into account the environmental effects, is proposed, and the effect of dissipation and decoherence during the charging process on both the stored work and the charging power is investigated. Our results show that the upper bound is saturated in some time intervals. Also, the maximum value of both the stored work and the corresponding power is achieved in the non-Markovian underdamped regime.
We derive a quantum speed limit for ergotropy charging in the NNN-qubit Dicke battery. With the qubits initially in their ground state and the charger in a coherent state of mean photon number nˉ\bar{n}nˉ, the charging time to a target fraction ε\varepsilonε of the maximum extractable work obeys, in the classical-field limit, ΓNτ∗(ε)≥arcsin⁡εΓ_N τ^{*}(\varepsilon) \geq \arcsin\sqrt{\varepsilon}ΓN​τ∗(ε)≥arcsinε​, where ΓN=2λnˉ/NΓ_N = 2λ\sqrt{\bar{n}/N}ΓN​=2λnˉ/N​ is a single rate combining the light-matter coupling, the charger amplitude and the system size. The bound is geometric: although the ergotropy is defined by an optimisation over unitaries, it reduces to a fixed function of the angle swept by the collective spin on the Bloch sphere, and the drive bounds the rate at which that angle can grow, so the charging time is at least the required arc divided by the maximum angular velocity. The reduction rests on an exact statement about work extraction: only the coherent component of the drive delivers extractable work, while its vacuum fluctuations deposit energy that remains locked in the passive state. This makes the short-time coefficient independent of the charger occupation, and it is what separates a bound on extractable work from a bound on stored energy, which no instantaneous-power argument can supply. At finite charger occupation the inequality is tested rather than proved: numerical integration of the full Dicke Hamiltonian, with a dynamical charger and a mixed battery state, finds the bound respected at every admitted charging time for two to five qubits, and approached most closely in the limit of small target work. The familiar square-root estimate is the chord to this arc, recovered in the small-angle limit and weaker whenever a large fraction of the maximum work is required.
We revisit the adiabatic charging of a three-level QBs, using the adiabatic quantum master equation formalism. We restrict ourselves to the weak-coupling regime with an Ohmic thermal bath and investigate the effects of relaxation and dephasing on the charging process. We analyze the dependence of the stored energy, ergotropy as well as efficiency of QB on the total time of evolution tft_ftf​. We demonstrate that for very short charging time (tft_ftf​), where the evolution is highly non-adiabatic, the stored energy and ergotropy are very small. However, with increasing tft_ftf​ we show that there is an optimal charging time, tfoptt_f^{opt}tfopt​, for maximum energy charging such that at low temperatures we could fully charge the battery and effectively extract the whole amount of energy from it. Note that, the optimal charging time could be decreased by adjusting strength of the coupling between system and environment and also appropriate choice of the Hamiltonian parameters which in turn speed up the charging process. On the other hand, we show that for very long charing time tft_ftf​ the charging energy, ergotropy and efficiency decrease due to thermal excitations. Furthermore to get more insights about the problem we investigate the distance between density matrix of system at optimal charging time tfoptt_f^{opt}tfopt​ and the corresponding thermal state using one-norm distance.
We study a minimal model for charging a quantum battery consisting of a two-level system (TLS) acting as a charger, coupled to a harmonic oscillator that serves as the quantum battery. A single-photon quantum pulse of light excites the TLS, which subsequently transfers its excitation to the isolated battery. The TLS may also decay into the electromagnetic environment. We obtain analytical solutions for the dynamics of the battery and determine the optimal pulse shape that maximizes the stored energy. The optimal pulse saturates a universal bound for the stored energy, determined by the TLS decay rates into the pulse and the environment. Furthermore, we derive the minimum charging time and establish a quantum speed limit at the exceptional point, where a critical transition occurs in the system's dynamics. We also present analytical expressions for the charging power and investigate the pulse duration that maximizes it.
We introduce the notion of a reverse quantum speed limit for arbitrary quantum evolution which answers a fundamental question: How slowly can a quantum system evolve in time? Using the geometrical approach to quantum mechanics, the reverse speed limit follows from the fact that the gauge-invariant length of the reference section is always greater than the Fubini-Study distance on the projective Hilbert space of the quantum system. We illustrate the reverse speed limit for two-level quantum systems with an external driving Hamiltonian and show that our results hold well. We find several examples where our bound is tight. We also find one practical application of the reverse speed limit in the discharging process of quantum batteries, which answers the following question: How slowly can quantum batteries discharge? Our result provides a lower bound on the average discharging power of quantum batteries.