Collective Quantum Batteries and Charger-Battery Setup in Open Quantum Systems: Impact of Inter-Qubit Interactions, Dissipation, and Quantum Criticality
Mahima Yadav, Devvrat Tiwari, Subhashish Banerjee
quant-phcond-mat.stat-mechSubmitted Nov 4, 2025• Announced Nov 5, 2025• 1 citation
Quantum batteries have emerged as promising platforms for exploring energy storage and transfer processes governed by quantum mechanical laws. In this work, we study three models of two-qubit open quantum systems. The first model comprises two central spins immersed in spin baths, and both central spins are collectively considered as quantum batteries. The impact of inter-qubit interactions on the performance of the quantum battery is investigated. In the second model, a two-qubit model interacting with a squeezed thermal bath serves as a collective quantum battery, where the impact of inter-atomic distance and the bath temperature on the battery's performance is explored. Furthermore, a two-qubit model is used, where one qubit is modeled as a battery and the other as a charger. The charger in this model interacts with an anisotropic spin-chain bath, which is conducive to quantum criticality. It is demonstrated that this criticality has a substantial impact on the quantum battery's storage capacity.
Quantum batteries have emerged as promising platforms for exploring energy storage and transfer processes governed by quantum mechanical laws. In this work, we study three models of two-qubit open quantum systems. The first model comprises two central spins immersed in spin baths, and both central spins are collectively considered as quantum batteries. The impact of inter-qubit interactions on the performance of the quantum battery is investigated. In the second model, a two-qubit model interacting with a squeezed thermal bath serves as a collective quantum battery, where the impact of inter-atomic distance and the bath temperature on the battery's performance is explored. Furthermore, a two-qubit model is used, where one qubit is modeled as a battery and the other as a charger. The charger in this model interacts with an anisotropic spin-chain bath, which is conducive to quantum criticality. It is demonstrated that this criticality has a substantial impact on the quantum battery's storage capacity.
Abstract In this paper, we study the performance of a quantum battery composed of three non-interacting central qubits, which are charged through interactions with three distinct thermal baths, each bath consisting of interacting qubits. We utilize the Holstein-Primakoff transformation and thermodynamic limits to map the collective spin operators of the baths to bosonic modes. Additionally, we employ the finite trio coherent state as the initial state for the charging process to explore its impact on the overall system performance. The study focuses on evaluating the stored energy efficiency and the entropy of the charger modes to assess the overall charging performance. By examining the system parameters such as anisotropy, dimension and shift parameters, and the intensity of the trio coherent state, the optimal conditions for efficient energy storage are identified. Our results provided the role of thermodynamic processes and quantum correlations in enhancing the performance of our quantum battery model.
Recently, there has been an upsurge of interest in quantum thermodynamic devices, notably quantum batteries. Quantum batteries serve as energy storage devices governed by the rules of quantum thermodynamics. Here, we propose a model of a quantum battery wherein the system of interest can be envisaged as a battery, and the ambient environment acts as a charger (dissipation) mechanism, modeled along the ubiquitous quantum Brownian motion. We employ quantifiers such as ergotropy and its (in)coherent manifestations, as well as instantaneous and average powers, to characterize the performance of the quantum battery. We investigate the influence of the bath's temperature and the system's coupling with the environment via momentum and position coordinates on the discharging and recharging dynamics. Moreover, we probe the memory effects of the system's dynamics and obtain a relationship between the system's non-Markovian evolution and the battery's recharging process.
Quantum battery works as a micro- or nanodevice to store and redistribute energy at the quantum level. Here we propose a spin-charger protocol, in which the battery cells are charged by a finite number of spins through a general Heisenberg XY interaction. Under the isotropic interaction, the spin-charger protocol is endowed with a higher capacity in terms of the maximum stored energy than the conventional protocols, where the battery is charged by a continuous-variable system, e.g., a cavity mode. By tuning the charger size, a tradeoff between the maximum stored energy and the average charging power is found in comparison to the cavity-charger protocol in the Tavis-Cummings model. Quantum advantage of our protocol is manifested by the scaling behavior of the optimal average power with respect to the battery size, in comparing the collective charging scheme to its parallel counterpart. We also discuss the detrimental effect on the charging performance from the anisotropic interaction between the battery and the charger, the nonideal initial states for both of them, and the crosstalk among the charger spins. A strong charger-charger interaction can be used to decouple the battery and the charger. Our findings about the advantages of the spin-charger protocol over the conventional cavity-charger protocols, including the high capacity of energy storage and the superior power law in the collective charging, provide an insight to exploit an efficient quantum battery based on the spin-spin-environment model.
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.
We study the energy-transfer process in quantum battery systems consisting of multiple central spins and bath spins. Here with ``quantum battery'' we refer to the central spins, whereas the bath serves as the ``charger.'' For the single-central-spin battery, we analytically derive the time evolutions of the energy transfer and the charging power with arbitrary number of bath spins. For the case of multiple central spins in the battery, we find the scaling-law relation between the maximum power Pmax and the number of central spins NB. It approximately satisfies a scaling law relation ${P}_{\mathrm{max}}\ensuremath{\propto}{N}_{B}^{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$, where scaling exponent $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ varies with the bath spin number N from the lower bound $\ensuremath{\alpha}=1/2$ to the upper bound $\ensuremath{\alpha}=3/2$. The lower and upper bounds correspond to the limits $N\ensuremath{\rightarrow}1$ and $N\ensuremath{\gg}{N}_{B}$, respectively. In thermodynamic limit, by applying the Holstein-Primakoff transformation, we rigorously prove that the upper bound is Pmax=0.72BANNB3/2, which shows the same advantage in scaling of a recent charging protocol based on the Tavis-Cummings model. Here B and A are the external magnetic field and coupling constant between the battery and the charger.
We study the charging process of open quantum batteries mediated by a common dissipative environment in two different scenarios. In the first case, we consider a quantum charger-battery model in the presence of a non-Markovian environment, where the battery can be properly charged in a strong coupling regime, without any external power and any direct interaction with the charger, i.e., a wireless-like charging happens. The environment plays a major role in the charging of the battery, while this does not happen in a weak coupling regime. In the second scenario, we show the effect of individual and collective spontaneous emission rates on the charging process of quantum batteries by considering a two-qubit system in the presence of Markovian dynamics. Our results demonstrate that open batteries can be satisfactorily charged in Markovian dynamics by employing an underdamped regime and/or strong external fields. We also present a robust battery by taking into account subradiant states and an intermediate regime. Moreover, we propose an experimental setup to explore the ergotropy in the first scenario.