Entanglement and work extraction in the central-spin quantum battery

TL;DR

This paper investigates a central-spin quantum battery, revealing an inverse relationship between entanglement and extractable work, and proposes optimal charging strategies that enhance work extraction efficiency.

Contribution

It provides an exact analytical study of entanglement and work extraction in central-spin batteries, introducing optimal charging methods with significant improvements.

Findings

Extractable work increases slowly before entanglement peaks and then rapidly when entanglement decreases.

An inverse relationship exists between extractable work and entanglement at the end of charging.

Using unpolarized Dicke states as chargers achieves universal charging time and improved power.

Abstract

We consider a central-spin battery where $N_b$ central spins serve as battery cells and $N_c$ bath spins serve as charging units. It is shown that the energy stored in the battery that can be extractable is quantified by the ergotropy, and that battery-charger entanglement is quantified via the Von Neumann entropy. By using an exact approach to a one-cell and two-cell battery, our analytical results suggest that, during the charging process, the extractable work slowly increases before the battery-charger entanglement reaches its maximum and then it will rapidly increase when the entanglement begins to decrease. In particular, we rigorously show that there is an inverse relationship between the extractable work and the entanglement at the end of the charging process. Moreover, we investigate different approaches to realize optimal work extraction without wasted energy. Among them a central-spin battery with an unpolarized Dicke state as the charger possesses a universal charging time $\propto 1/N_c$, large extractable work, and $\sqrt{N_c}$-improvement of charging power compared with the battery in the Tavis-Cummings limit. The above-mentioned results have also been numerically verified in multi-cell batteries. Our results pave the way to improve extractable work storage in the central-spin battery and highlight a competitive relation between the extractable work and the battery-charger entanglement.