Large collective power enhancement in dissipative charging of a quantum battery

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a dissipative charging protocol for a quantum battery with many atoms can achieve a quadratic power scaling with the number of atoms, surpassing Hamiltonian protocols, despite some energy loss.

Contribution

It introduces a dissipative charging method for quantum batteries that achieves quadratic power scaling, a novel result in the field.

Findings

Power scales as N^2 in the extensive regime.

Large coherence can be stored and released coherently.

Significant energy loss occurs through spontaneous emission.

Abstract

We consider a model for a quantum battery consisting of a collection of $N$ two-level atoms driven by a classical field and decaying to a common reservoir. In the extensive regime, where the energy $E$ scales as $N$ and the fluctuations $\Delta E/E \to 0$, our dissipative charging protocol yields a power proportional to $N^2$, a scaling that cannot be achieved in this regime by Hamiltonian protocols. The tradeoff for this enhanced charging power is a relative inefficiency, since a large fraction of the incoming energy is lost through spontaneous emission to the environment. Nevertheless, we find the system can store a large amount of coherence, and also release the stored energy coherently through spontaneous emission, again with a power scaling as $N^2$.