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arXiv:2403.05956

Operational Ergotropy: suboptimality of the geodesic drive

Pritam Halder, Srijon Ghosh, Saptarshi Roy, Tamal Guha

Published Mar 9, 2024• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We put forth a notion of optimality for extracting ergotropic work, derived from an energy constraint governing the necessary dynamics for work extraction in a quantum system. Within the traditional ergotropy framework, which predicts an infinite set of equivalent pacifying unitaries, we demonstrate that the optimal choice lies in driving along the geodesic connecting a given state to its corresponding passive state. Moreover, in a practical scenario where unitaries are inevitably affected by environmental factors, we refine the existing definition of ergotropy and introduce the notion of operational ergotropy. It enables the characterization of work extraction in noisy scenarios. We find that for certain typical noise models, the optimal choice which governs the Schrodinger part of the dynamics, aligns with the optimal drive in the unperturbed scenario. However, we demonstrate that such optimality is not universal by presenting an explicit counterexample. Additionally, within this generalized framework, we discuss the potential for faster work extraction from quantum systems in the presence of noise.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2403.05956

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We put forth a notion of optimality for extracting ergotropic work, derived from an energy constraint governing the necessary dynamics for work extraction in a quantum system. Within the traditional ergotropy framework, which predicts an infinite set of equivalent pacifying unitaries, we demonstrate that the optimal choice lies in driving along the geodesic connecting a given state to its corresponding passive state. Moreover, in a practical scenario where unitaries are inevitably affected by environmental factors, we refine the existing definition of ergotropy and introduce the notion of operational ergotropy. It enables the characterization of work extraction in noisy scenarios. We find that for certain typical noise models, the optimal choice which governs the Schrodinger part of the dynamics, aligns with the optimal drive in the unperturbed scenario. However, we demonstrate that such optimality is not universal by presenting an explicit counterexample. Additionally, within this generalized framework, we discuss the potential for faster work extraction from quantum systems in the presence of noise.
Quantum thermodynamics is often formulated as a theory with constrained access to operations and resources. In this manuscript, we find a closed formula for the Gaussian ergotropy, i.e. the maximum energy that can be extracted from bosonic systems governed by quadratic Hamiltonians by means of Gaussian unitaries only. This formula resembles the well-known eigenvalue-based expression for the standard ergotropy, but is instead formulated using symplectic eigenvalues. We further prove that the Gaussian ergotropy is additive, indicating that the multiple-copy scenario does not benefit from Gaussian entangling operations. Extending our analysis to the relationship between ergotropic and entropic functions, we establish bounds linking entropic measures of Gaussianity to extractable work. Finally, we generalise our framework to open systems by studying the optimal state preparation that minimises the energy output in a Gaussian channel.
Constraints on work extraction are fundamental to our operational understanding of the thermodynamics of both classical and quantum systems. In the quantum setting, finite-time control operations typically generate coherence in the instantaneous energy eigenbasis of the dynamical system. Thermodynamic cycles can, in principle, be designed to extract work from this nonequilibrium resource. Here, we isolate and study the quantum coherent component to the work yield in such protocols. Specifically, we identify a coherent contribution to the ergotropy (the maximum amount of unitarily extractable work via cyclical variation of Hamiltonian parameters). We show this by dividing the optimal transformation into an incoherent operation and a coherence extraction cycle. We obtain bounds for both the coherent and incoherent parts of the extractable work and discuss their saturation in specific settings. Our results are illustrated with several examples, including finite-dimensional systems and bosonic Gaussian states that describe recent experiments on quantum heat engines with a quantized load.
Ergotropy, which represents the maximum amount of work that can be extracted from a quantum system, has become a focal point of interest in the fields of quantum thermodynamics and information processing. In practical scenarios, the interaction of quantum systems with their surrounding environment is unavoidable. Recent studies have increasingly focused on analyzing open quantum systems affected by non-stationary environmental fluctuations due to their significant impact on various physical scenarios. While much research has concentrated on work extraction from these systems, it often assumes that the environmental degrees of freedom are substantial and that the environment is effectively in equilibrium. This has led us to explore work extraction from quantum systems under non-stationary environmental conditions. In this work, the dynamics of ergotropy will be investigated in a non-equilibrium environment for both Markovian and non-Markovian regime. In this study, both the coherent and incoherent parts of the ergotropy will be considered. It will be shown that for a non-equilibrium environment, the extraction of work is more efficient compared to when the environment is in equilibrium.
We investigate the dynamics of ergotropy in open systems under Markovian and non-Markovian evolutions. In this scenario, we begin by formulating the ergotropy of an arbitrary qubit state in terms of energy and coherence. Thus we determine the conditions for ergotropy freezing and ergotropy sudden death as a consequence of the system-bath interaction. In order to use ergotropy as a resource for energy extraction in the form of work in an open-system scenario, we adopt the entropy-based formulation of quantum thermodynamics. In this approach, the work gains an additional environment-induced component, which may be present even for constant Hamiltonians. We then establish an analytical relationship between the environment-induced work and ergotropy, providing an interpretation of environment-induced work in terms of variation of ergotropy. In particular, energy transfer by environment-induced work can be performed up to a limit, which is governed by the energy cost to transit between the initial and final passive states of the quantum dynamics. We illustrate these results for qubit states evolving under nondissipative and dissipative quantum processes.
Interactions between a quantum system and its environment can inject ergotropy into the system, raising the question of the minimal dimensionality and physical resources required for such injection. We first show that ergotropy injection is impossible under thermal operations when both the system and environment are qubits, whereas it becomes possible when the environment is enlarged to a qutrit. We further show that already in the qubit-qubit setting, relaxing environmental thermality and allowing interactions between system and environment allows ergotropy increment under energy-conserving unitaries. To elucidate the role of interactions, we consider a two-qubit isotropic XY interaction Hamiltonian and identify its distinct degeneracy regimes. We show that, in the central-block regime, when both the initial system and environmental states are incoherent, no ergotropic gain is possible when the environment is initially thermal, irrespective of the interaction strength. In contrast, environmental athermality in the form of population inversion, while retaining incoherence, enables ergotropic injection. We derive the optimal ergotropic gain and show that environmental coherence can enhance it, while system coherence alone need not be beneficial and can even reduce the gain. We further consider the double-degenerate regime, characterized by a finite interaction strength, and demonstrate positive ergotropic gain even for a thermal environment.
Maximum quantum work extraction is generally defined in terms of the ergotropy functional, no matter how experimentally complicated is the implementation of the optimal unitary allowing for it, especially in the case of multipartite systems. In this framework, we consider a quantum battery made up of many interacting subsystems and study the maximum extractable work via concurrent local unitary operations on each subsystem. We call the resulting functional parallel ergotropy. Focusing on the bipartite case, we first observe that parallel ergotropy outperforms work extraction via egoistic strategies, in which the first agent A extracts locally on its part the maximum available work and the second agent B, subsequently, extracts what is left on the other part. For the agents, this showcases the need of cooperating for an overall benefit. Second, from the informational point of view, we observe that the parallel capacity of a state can detect entanglement and compare it with the statistical entanglement witness that exploits fluctuations of stochastic work extraction. Additionally, we face the technical problem of computing parallel ergotropy. We derive analytical upper bounds for specific classes of states and Hamiltonians and provide recipes to obtain numerical upper bounds via semidefinite programming in the generic case. Finally, extending the concept of parallel ergotropy, we demonstrate that system's free-time evolution and application of local unitaries allow one to saturate the gap with the ergotropy of the whole system.