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arXiv:2606.19945 · Physica Scripta

Purity and bound energy in ancilla-assisted work extraction

B. Vigneshwar, Farhaan Khan, R. Sankaranarayanan

quant-phSubmitted Jun 18, 2026• Announced Jun 19, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We investigate ancilla-assisted work extraction in quantum batteries from the perspective of bound energy and purity. We show that the bound energy of the reduced system provides a tight upper bound to the daemonic gain and that this bound is saturated for globally pure system--ancilla states. Motivated by this relation, we introduce a purity-based gain that qualitatively predicts the daemonic gain without requiring explicit optimization over measurements. We further introduce a protocol to analyze the role of dissipation and intrinsic interactions on daemonic gain. Under a collective environment, dissipation can dynamically generate and stabilize finite daemonic gain through environment-induced correlations. In interacting systems, level crossings and spectral restructuring strongly modify the attainable gain through their influence on the accessible bound energy. Our results demonstrate that daemonic gain is governed not only by correlations, but also by the spectral structure of the underlying Hamiltonian and information loss captured by bound energy and purity.

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We investigate ancilla-assisted work extraction in quantum batteries from the perspective of bound energy and purity. We show that the bound energy of the reduced system provides a tight upper bound to the daemonic gain and that this bound is saturated for globally pure system--ancilla states. Motivated by this relation, we introduce a purity-based gain that qualitatively predicts the daemonic gain without requiring explicit optimization over measurements. We further introduce a protocol to analyze the role of dissipation and intrinsic interactions on daemonic gain. Under a collective environment, dissipation can dynamically generate and stabilize finite daemonic gain through environment-induced correlations. In interacting systems, level crossings and spectral restructuring strongly modify the attainable gain through their influence on the accessible bound energy. Our results demonstrate that daemonic gain is governed not only by correlations, but also by the spectral structure of the underlying Hamiltonian and information loss captured by bound energy and purity.
The amount of work that can be extracted from a quantum system can be increased by exploiting the information obtained from a measurement performed on a correlated ancillary system. The concept of daemonic ergotropy has been introduced to properly describe and quantify this work extraction enhancement in the quantum regime. We here explore the application of this idea in the context of continuously monitored open quantum systems, where information is gained by measuring the environment interacting with the energy-storing quantum device. We first show that the corresponding daemonic ergotropy takes values between the ergotropy and the energy of the corresponding unconditional state. The upper bound is achieved by assuming an initial pure state and a perfectly efficient projective measurement on the environment, independently of the kind of measurement performed. On the other hand, if the measurement is inefficient or the initial state is mixed, the daemonic ergotropy is generally dependent on the measurement strategy. This scenario is investigated via a paradigmatic example of an open quantum battery: a two-level atom driven by a classical field and whose spontaneously emitted photons are continuously monitored via either homodyne, heterodyne, or photodetection.
We address the problem of extracting work from a quantum system assisted by a quantum non-demolition (QND) energy measurement. When a perfect QND measurement can be performed and an auxiliary zero-temperature bath is available, the full energy of the quantum state can in principle be extracted even without any prior information on the input state. Owing to the presence of a zero-temperature bath, this is achieved at no energetic cost for the measurement process itself. On the contrary, here we consider what happens when the same protocol is implemented in non-ideal scenarios, specifically when the auxiliary bath has a finite temperature. In this case, not only is it impossible to extract the entire energy from the system, but the measurement strategy also acquires a non-zero energetic cost, accounting for both the interaction between system and measurement apparatus, and the corresponding Landauer erasure cost. We quantitatively assess the performance of these work-extraction protocols, both in absolute terms and through the so-called daemonic net gain, which explicitly includes the energetic cost of the measurement. We rigorously prove that, when access to a thermal bath is allowed in the extraction protocol, the daemonic net gain is always non-positive for any temperature of the auxiliary bath. Conversely, when only unitary operations are considered, the daemonic net gain can attain positive values. We further discuss these different figures of merit by analyzing a paradigmatic example for a single qubit system.
Abstract The possibility of extracting more work from a physical system thanks to the information obtained from measurements has been a topic of fundamental interest in the context of thermodynamics since the formulation of the Maxwell’s demon thought experiment. We here consider this problem from the perspective of an open quantum battery interacting with an environment that can be continuously measured. By modeling it via a continuously monitored collisional model, we show how to implement the corresponding dynamics as a quantum circuit, including the final conditional feedback unitary evolution that allows to enhance the amount of work extracted. By exploiting the flexibility of IBM quantum computers and by properly modelling the corresponding quantum circuit, we experimentally simulate the work extraction protocol showing how the obtained experimental values of the daemonic extracted work are close to their theoretical upper bound quantified by the so-called daemonic ergotropy. We also demonstrate how by properly modelling the noise affecting the quantum circuit, one can improve the work extraction protocol by optimizing the corresponding extraction unitary feedback operation.
Abstract According to the Maxwell demon paradigm, additional work can be extracted from a classical or quantum system by exploiting information obtained through measurements on a correlated ancillary system. In the quantum setting, the maximum work extractable via unitary operations in such measurement-assisted protocols is referred to as daemonic ergotropy. In this work, we explore this concept in the context of continuous-variable quantum systems, focusing on Gaussian states and general-dyne (Gaussian) measurements. We derive a general expression for the daemonic ergotropy and examine two key scenarios: (i) bipartite Gaussian states where a general-dyne measurement is performed on one of the two parties, and (ii) open Gaussian quantum systems under continuous general-dyne monitoring of the environment. Remarkably, we show that for single-mode Gaussian states, the ergotropy depends solely on the state’s energy and purity. This enables us to express the daemonic ergotropy as a simple function of the unconditional energy and the purity of the conditional states, revealing that enhanced daemonic work extraction is directly linked to measurement-induced purification. We illustrate our findings through two paradigmatic examples: extracting daemonic work from a two-mode squeezed thermal state and from a continuously monitored optical parametric oscillator. In both case we identify the optimal general-dyne strategies that maximize the conditional purity and, in turn, the daemonic ergotropy.
We propose a protocol for extracting work from a coherent quantum battery state by exploiting measurement-assisted feedback mediated by a continuous-variable pointer. The scheme relies on the unitary operator U=exp⁡(−ikt H^⊗P^/ℏ)U = \exp(-i k t \, \hat{H} \otimes \hat{P}/\hbar)U=exp(−iktH^⊗P^/ℏ), which generates entanglement between the battery's energy eigenstates and the position of an auxiliary pointer. A subsequent projective measurement of the pointer's position conditionally prepares the battery in a pure state from which work can be extracted via a feedback unitary. We analyze the protocol for a two-level quantum battery and a Gaussian pointer, computing the conditional states and the corresponding daemonic ergotropy. For the pure initial state considered, we find that the daemonic ergotropy equals the standard ergotropy for all interaction strengths, demonstrating that the measurement-assisted feedback recovers the full extractable work that would otherwise become inaccessible due to entanglement with the pointer when its degrees of freedom are traced out. The protocol thus provides a physically transparent realization of a quantum Maxwell demon, where the pointer acts as a quantum measurement ancilla whose position becomes correlated with the battery's energy. The scheme is amenable to experimental implementation in trapped-ion systems, and it contributes to the ongoing efforts to understand the role of quantum coherence and measurement in thermodynamics.
This study investigates the potential of local non-unital noise and quantum channel memory to enhance work extraction from classically correlated quantum states. Utilizing the framework of daemonic ergotropy, which incorporates measurement-based feedback via an ancillary system, we show that amplitude damping channels can induce quantum correlations that enable additional extractable work. Through analytical derivations and numerical simulations, we quantify the daemonic gain and demonstrate that channel memory significantly amplifies this advantage by preserving system-ancilla correlations. Our results reveal that non-unital noise can serve not as a limitation but as a valuable thermodynamic resource in quantum protocols.