Phase-tunable remote nonreciprocal charging in waveguide QED

TL;DR

This paper introduces a phase-tunable waveguide-QED system enabling remote, unidirectional quantum battery charging through engineered interference, independent of direct local interactions, with flexible design for quantum networks.

Contribution

It proposes a novel waveguide-QED architecture for remote quantum-battery charging that uses interference to achieve nonreciprocal energy transfer without direct coupling.

Findings

Achieves perfect nonreciprocity and battery-dominated storage in a specific configuration.

Distance-insensitive directionality in giant-small-emitter setups.

Extends to quadratic driving, showing non-passive battery states with distinct ergotropy.

Abstract

Remote quantum batteries require directional and controllable energy transfer between spatially separated quantum nodes, yet most existing protocols rely on direct charger-battery Hamiltonian couplings. Here we propose a phase-tunable waveguide-QED architecture for remote quantum-battery charging, in which a driven charger and a remote battery are coupled solely via engineered waveguide-mediated interference, without any direct local interaction. We systematically compare four configurations: two-giant-emitter and giant-small-emitter hybrids, each with open or mirror-terminated waveguides. By engineering the propagation and coupling phases, the waveguide-mediated coherent exchange interaction and collective dissipation can be balanced to suppress the backward channel while retaining a finite forward channel, thereby realizing cascaded-like unidirectional charging. Our analysis shows that nonreciprocity and storage efficiency can be independently engineered, offering design flexibility for different quantum network scenarios. The giant-small-emitter mirror-terminated configuration simultaneously achieves perfect nonreciprocity and battery-dominated storage, while both giant-small-emitter configurations exhibit distance-insensitive directionality. Extending the scheme to quadratic driving, we show that anomalous second moments render the battery state non-passive, making ergotropy a performance metric distinct from stored energy. These results establish phase-tunable waveguide networks as a versatile platform for remote quantum-energy transfer and provide design principles for directional and work-extractable energy storage in quantum networks.