We analyze the geometric phase and dynamic phase acquired by a qubit coupled to an environment through pure dephasing, establishing a direct connection between phase accumulation and ergotropy. We show that the dynamic phase depends solely on the incoherent ergotropy, reflecting its purely energetic origin. In contrast, the geometric phase exhibits a nontrivial dependence on both the coherent and incoherent contributions to the total ergotropy, encoding the interplay between coherence, dissipation, and energy extraction. By performing a perturbative expansion in the qubit–environment coupling strength, we demonstrate that, in the weak-coupling and long-time regime, the geometric phase becomes determined exclusively by the incoherent ergotropy, which coincides with the asymptotic value of the total ergotropy reached under decoherence. These results provide a clear physical distinction between dynamic and geometric phases in open quantum systems and establish geometric phases as sensitive probes of energetic resources. Furthermore, in superconducting circuit implementations, our findings suggest that the ergotropy of a two-level system could be inferred indirectly from geometric-phase measurements using standard techniques such as quantum state tomography.
We analyze the geometric phase and dynamic phase acquired by a qubit coupled to an environment through pure dephasing, establishing a direct connection between phase accumulation and ergotropy. We show that the dynamic phase depends solely on the incoherent ergotropy, reflecting its purely energetic origin. In contrast, the geometric phase exhibits a nontrivial dependence on both the coherent and incoherent contributions to the total ergotropy, encoding the interplay between coherence, dissipation, and energy extraction. By performing a perturbative expansion in the qubit–environment coupling strength, we demonstrate that, in the weak-coupling and long-time regime, the geometric phase becomes determined exclusively by the incoherent ergotropy, which coincides with the asymptotic value of the total ergotropy reached under decoherence. These results provide a clear physical distinction between dynamic and geometric phases in open quantum systems and establish geometric phases as sensitive probes of energetic resources. Furthermore, in superconducting circuit implementations, our findings suggest that the ergotropy of a two-level system could be inferred indirectly from geometric-phase measurements using standard techniques such as quantum state tomography.
We analyze the geometric phase and dynamic phase acquired by a qubit coupled to an environment through pure dephasing, establishing a direct connection between phase accumulation and ergotropy. We show that the dynamic phase depends solely on the incoherent ergotropy, reflecting its purely energetic origin. In contrast, the geometric phase exhibits a nontrivial dependence on both the coherent and incoherent contributions to the total ergotropy, encoding the interplay between coherence, dissipation, and energy extraction. By performing a perturbative expansion in the qubit-environment coupling strength, we demonstrate that, in the weak-coupling and long-time regime, the geometric phase becomes determined exclusively by the incoherent ergotropy, which coincides with the asymptotic value of the total ergotropy reached under decoherence. These results provide a clear physical distinction between dynamic and geometric phases in open quantum systems and establish geometric phases as sensitive probes of energetic resources. Furthermore,~in superconducting circuit implementations, our findings suggest that the ergotropy of a two-level system could be inferred indirectly from geometric-phase measurements using standard techniques such as quantum state tomography.
Quantum coherence, encoded in the off-diagonal elements of a system's density matrix, is a key resource in quantum thermodynamics, fundamentally limiting the maximum extractable work known as ergotropy. While previous experiments have isolated coherence-related contributions to work extraction, it remains unclear how coherence can be harnessed in a controllable and energy-efficient manner. Here, we experimentally investigate the role of initial-state coherence in work extraction from a superconducting transmon qubit. By preparing a variety of pure states and implementing three complementary extraction protocols, we reveal how coherence governs the partitioning of ergotropy. We find that the choice of initial state depends on the dominant decoherence channel-energy relaxation or dephasing. By further accounting for thermodynamic costs, we identify optimal initial states that maximize the efficiency. Our results demonstrate that the initial-state design provides a scalable approach to coherence control and advances the development of efficient quantum thermodynamic devices.
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.
The advantage of quantum heat engines turns out to be the ability to utilize the quantum resources, such as the quantum coherence, which is, however, suppressed by the irreducible thermal dissipation of baths. Herein, we construct a two-qubit system that is coupled in different directions to the thermal bath with a single pseudomode, which can be regarded as a simple model for the establishment of the coherent contribution of ergotropy in the non-Markovian environment. It is found that the presence of coupling anisotropy gives rise to the long-standing quantum coherence that is essential for the coherent ergotropy, while with merely isotropic coupling, the incoherent contribution of ergotropy dominates. The stronger the anisotropic couplings, the greater the coherent ergotropy, and a completely coherent ergotropy can be observed in both antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic cases. In addition, this significant ability to extract work from quantum coherence can be extended to multiple-qubit systems. Our model, therefore, provides a proof-of-principle pathway for the utilization of quantum coherence in heat engines.
We investigate the decomposition of ergotropy into incoherent and coherent contributions for quantum systems subject to typical Markovian noise channels. The incoherent part originates from population inversion in the energy eigenbasis after dephasing, while the coherent part captures the role of quantum coherence in work extraction. For single-qubit systems, we derive explicit conditions for freezing and enhancement of coherent ergotropy and obtain an analytical upper bound, showing that it cannot exceed one half of the state's quantum coherence. We then study two classes of separable two-qubit states under local noise. For Bell-diagonal states, which are locally completely passive and possess no local coherence, we prove that the total extractable work equals the average of geometric quantum and classical correlations. In this case, coherent ergotropy cannot be enhanced, although freezing occurs under specific noise conditions. By contrast, for separable states with local coherence, coherent ergotropy can increase under all considered noise channels, including phase-flip and depolarizing noise. Extending the analysis to multipartite systems, we show that both the magnitude and range of noise-induced enhancement grow with the number of qubits, indicating collective reinforcement. Finally, we demonstrate through an explicit example that entanglement does not prevent this enhancement: coherent ergotropy may increase under noise even for entangled states. Our results reveal that noise can assist energy storage, challenging the conventional view of noise as purely detrimental and suggesting compatibility between noise-assisted enhancement and fast entanglement-based charging mechanisms in quantum batteries.
We consider a quasi-probability distribution of work for an isolated quantum system coupled to the energy-storage device given by the ideal weight. Specifically, we analyze a trade-off between changes in average energy and changes in weight's variance, where work is extracted from the coherent and incoherent ergotropy of the system. Primarily, we reveal that the extraction of positive coherent ergotropy can be accompanied by the reduction of work fluctuations (quantified by a variance loss) by utilizing the non-classical states of a work reservoir. On the other hand, we derive a fluctuation-decoherence relation for a quantum weight, defining a lower bound of its energy dispersion via a dumping function of the coherent contribution to the system's ergotropy. Specifically, it reveals that unlocking ergotropy from coherences results in high fluctuations, which diverge when the total coherent energy is unlocked. The proposed autonomous protocol of work extraction shows a significant difference between extracting coherent and incoherent ergotropy: The former can decrease the variance, but its absolute value diverges if more and more energy is extracted, whereas for the latter, the gain is always non-negative, but a total (incoherent) ergotropy can be extracted with finite work fluctuations. Furthermore, we present the framework in terms of the introduced quasi-probability distribution, which has a physical interpretation of its cumulants, is free from the invasive nature of measurements, and reduces to the two-point measurement scheme (TPM) for incoherent states. Finally, we analytically solve the work-variance trade-off for a qubit, explicitly revealing all the above quantum and classical regimes.