Topological enhancement of a PT-symmetric Su-Schrieffer-Heeger quantum battery

TL;DR

This paper explores how topological properties in a PT-symmetric SSH lattice can enhance the charging performance of a non-Hermitian quantum battery, revealing advantages in energy storage and work extraction.

Contribution

It demonstrates that lattice topology and non-Hermiticity interplay to improve quantum battery performance, highlighting topology as a physical resource.

Findings

Edge-state exceptional points occur at lower gain-loss strength than bulk EPs.

Topological regimes show better transient and long-term charging performance.

Topological advantage persists under open-system Lindblad dynamics.

Abstract

We investigate a non-Hermitian quantum battery based on the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) lattice, charged through a parity-time (PT)-symmetric protocol that alternates gain and loss between the two sublattices. The interplay between lattice topology and non-Hermiticity gives rise to both bulk and edge exceptional points (EPs), which govern the charging dynamics. In the topological regime, an edge-state EP appears at a smaller gain-loss strength than the bulk thresholds and gives rise to an additional edge-broken regime absent in the trivial configuration. This topology-specific spectral structure is reflected in the charging dynamics, where the topological phase exhibits more favorable transient and long-time performance in the representative non-Hermitian regimes considered here. We further examine the corresponding Lindblad dynamics, identifying the non-Hermitian model as the conditional no-jump description of the same gain-loss processes. The Lindblad results show that the topological advantage remains visible at the level of stored energy, extractable work, and extractable fraction under unconditional open-system evolution. These findings demonstrate that topology constitutes a genuine physical resource for enhancing the performance of quantum batteries.