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Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Charging of a quantum battery by a single-photon quantum pulse

Elnaz Darsheshdar, Seyed Mostafa Moniri

Published Jun 17, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract 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 battery dynamics 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.

DOI
10.1088/1361-6455/ae7eb7

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Abstract 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 battery dynamics 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 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 investigate the charging of a harmonic-oscillator quantum battery by a propagating two-photon quantum pulse coupled through a two-level-system charger. Excitation-number conservation reduces the dynamics to a sequential response of the first and second excitation sectors, whose effective non-Hermitian generators exhibit two exceptional points separating overdamped, mixed, and underdamped regimes. We derive the exact full-charging amplitude and the response-matched two-photon temporal mode that achieves perfect charging in the ideal resonant single-channel model. For experimentally accessible Gaussian pulses, moderate temporal anticorrelation or a finite photon delay can enhance charging, whereas positive correlations generally suppress it. States with equal Schmidt number can nevertheless show different charging efficiencies, demonstrating that temporal-mode structure and response matching, rather than nonseparability alone, determine charging performance.
Abstract The challenge of storing energy efficiently and sustainably is highly prominent within modern scientific investigations. Due to the ongoing trend of miniaturization, the design of expressly quantum storage devices is itself a crucial task within current quantum technological research. Here we provide a transparent analytic model of a two-component quantum battery, composed of a charger and an energy holder, which is driven by a short laser pulse. We provide simple expressions for the energy stored in the battery, the maximum amount of work which can be extracted, both the instantaneous and the average powers, and the relevant charging times. This allows us to discuss explicitly the optimal design of the battery in terms of the driving strength of the pulse, the coupling between the charger and the holder, and the inevitable energy loss into the environment. We anticipate that our theory can act as a helpful guide for the nascent experimental work building and characterizing the first generation of truly quantum batteries.
Abstract Quantum control allows us to address the problem of engineering quantum dynamics for special purposes. While recently the field of quantum batteries has attracted much attention, optimization of their charging has not benefited from the quantum control methods. Here we fill this gap by using an optimization method. We apply for the first time the convergent iterative method for the control of the population of a bipartite quantum system in two cases, starting with a qubit-qubit case. The quantum charger-battery system is considered here, where the energy is pumped into the charger by an external classical electromagnetic field. Secondly, we systematically extend our investigation to a second case involving two harmonic oscillators in the Gaussian regime, presenting an original formulation of the method. In both cases, the charger is considered to be an open dissipative system, as its interaction with the drive may require a more pronounced exposure to general interaction with environment. A key consideration in our optimization strategy is the practical concern of turning the charging external field on and off. We find that optimizing the pulse shape yields a substantial enhancement in both the power and efficiency of the charging process compared to a sinusoidal drive. The harmonic oscillator configuration of quantum batteries is particularly intriguing, as the optimal driving pulse remains effective regardless of the environmental temperature. This study introduces a novel approach to quantum battery charging optimization, opening avenues for enhanced performance in real-world applications.
Remote charging of a quantum battery (QB) is hindered by radiative leakage of the excitation into the photonic environment that acts as a mediator for energy transfer. We consider a charger-battery model consisting of two two-level systems (TLSs) that are locally coupled to two sites of a one-dimensional coupled cavity array. When their transition frequency lies outside the propagation band, the system forms atom-photon bound states with localized photonic components, and the overlap of these components lifts the degeneracy of the even- and odd-parity bound states, yielding an energy splitting that drives coherent energy transfer from the charger to the QB. In this way, the band gap suppresses resonant emission and the localized bound states mediate remote charging. From the parity-resolved spectrum, we relate the charging time to the energy splitting and the charged ergotropy to the fraction of TLS population on the bound states. Bound states closer to the band edge extend the interaction range of the TLSs but contain a large photonic fraction and are consequently more susceptible to photon loss.
We investigate the optimal charging processes for several models of quantum batteries, finding how to maximize the energy stored in a given battery with a finite-time modulation of a set of external fields. We approach the problem using advanced tools of optimal control theory, highlighting the universality of some features of the optimal solutions, for instance the emergence of the well-known bang-bang behavior of time-dependent external fields. The technique presented here is general, and we apply it to specific cases in which the energy is either pumped into the battery by external forces (direct charging) or transferred into it from an external charger (mediated charging). In this paper we focus on particular systems that consist of coupled qubits and harmonic oscillators, for which the optimal charging problem can be explicitly solved using a combined analytical-numerical approach based on our optimal control techniques. However, our approach can be applied to more complex setups, thus fostering the study of many-body effects in the charging process.