Work and Heat Value of Bound Entanglement

TL;DR

This paper investigates the energetic potential of bound entangled states, analyzing their ability to produce work and heat, and compares them with free entangled states under various operational schemes.

Contribution

It introduces a framework to quantify work and heat extraction from bound entangled states and compares their energetic value with free entangled states.

Findings

Bound entangled states can yield measurable work and heat.

Distillability influences the work and heat potential of entangled states.

Decoherence affects the mutation and energetic properties of entangled states.

Abstract

Entanglement has recently been recognized as an energy resource which can outperform classical resources if decoherence is relatively low. Multi-atom entangled states can mutate irreversibly to so called bound entangled (BE) states under noise. Resource value of BE states in information applications has been under critical study and a few cases where they can be useful have been identified. We explore the energetic value of typical BE states. Maximal work extraction is determined in terms of ergotropy. Since the BE states are non-thermal, extracting heat from them is less obvious. We compare single and repeated interaction schemes to operationally define and harvest heat from BE states. BE and free entangled (FE) states are compared in terms of their ergotropy and maximal heat values. Distinct roles of distillability in work and heat values of FE and BE states are pointed out. Decoherence effects in dynamics of ergotropy and mutation of FE states into BE states are examined to clarify significance of the work value of BE states. Thermometry of distillability of entanglement using micromaser cavity is proposed.